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THE 



EMPTY CRIB: 

& JHemortal of ILfttle ©corgfe. 

JF/77/ WORDS OF CONSOLATION FOR 
BEREAVED PARENTS. 



BY 






REV. THEO. L: CUYLER, 




BROOKLYN. 



NEW YORK: 

R. CARTER A\l) BROTHERS, 
Broadway. 



J37f \ '7ir 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District 
of New York. 



CAMBRIDGE : 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



tr 

GEORGE SIDNEY CUYLER, 

ONE OF THE TWIN CHILDREN OF 

Rev. Theodore L. and Annie E. Cuyler. 



Born in Brooklyn, July 9, 1863. 
Went Home to Heaven, April 19, 18 



The one shall be take?i y a?td the other left" 



" Who plucked that Flower ?" 

CRIED THE GARDENER, AS HE WALKED THROUGH THE GARDEN. 
HIS FELLOW-SERVANT ANSWERED, 

"THE MASTER!" 

AND THE GARDENER HELD HIS PEACE. 

[Inscription in an old English churchyard.] 




£lnb iljen sball be mine, satilj ibc gjjxb of l^sts, in i^at 
ban foljen J mxkt xtn mn jcfoels. 




Page 

Memorial 9 

A Child in the Midst 107 

God's Bitter Cups for Sick Souls . . 115 

Our Baby 124 

Quietness before God 126 

is it well with the child ? 132 

The Conversion of Children .... 135 

Children in Heaven 144 

Only a Baby's Grave 148 

A Walk in Greenwood N . 150 

The Empty Little Bed 159 



MEMORIAL. 



A FTER the death of our dear boy, a 
very large number of tender and 
beautiful letters of condolence reached us 
from all parts of the land. As it was 
quite impossible for us to reply to all these 
kind letters, it occurred to us that the 
most fitting response would be to prepare 
a brief sketch of our child, and of the 
touching circumstances of his death, and 
to send it to those whose words of sym- 
pathy have been so grateful. Many of 
these letters contained words of precious 
consolation that are as well calculated to 
comfort other bereaved parents as they 



IO THE EMPTT CRIB. 

were to comfort us in our first great 
sorrow. Such passages from them as 
could be printed, without any violation of 
delicacy, have been wrought in with the 
following brief narrative. Both the nar- 
rative and the succeeding articles are 
published simply and solely with the hope 
that they may be a solace and a blessing 
to some hearts in the great Household of 
the Sorrowing'. 

This is the largest household in the 
world. There is hardly a dwelling "in 
which there is not one dead." In almost 
every home there are stored away, 
among its most cherished treasures, a lit- 
tle photograph, or a box of toys, a torn 
kite, a halfworn cap, or a pair of tiny 
shoes. They all tell a story too deep for 
tears. 

Into such homes I have been called, 
like other pastors, a thousand times. I 



MEMORIAL, II 

have sat down beside the afflicted fathers 
and mothers in my flock, and tried to 
comfort them. I have read to them the 
heavenly messages of consolation, and 
knelt beside them as they rocked and 
trembled under the tempest of their ag- 
ony. But how often have these mothers 
said to me, ''Ah ! my pastor, there is one 
thing in this world that you never can 
understand until you have felt it for your- 
self, — and that is the sensations of a 
parent over his or her own child as it lies in 
the first awful silence of death. You must 
go through all this for yourself, and then 
you can realize what it is we suffer, and 
what it is that our smitten souls most 
need." After hearing such things, we have 
come back to our happy home and said, 
" Oh ! if those lessons are to be learned 
only by having the little crib emptied 
in this house, may the Hand that takes the 



12 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

treasure be the same Hand that can open 
our eyes to see the infinite blessedness 
of a sanctified sorrow !" 

Three years' ago, in a half-playful 
description of " A New Home " (in the 
New York "Evangelist") I wrote, "What 
sorrows this home hath in store for us, 
God only knoweth. Perhaps in yonder 
nursery a little crib may grow deeper 
until it deepens into a grave. Father, 
not as we will, but as Thou wilt." The 
prophecy is fulfilled. And I trust that 
it will not be an indelicate exposure of 
private griefs if a father's heart utters, at 
such a time, a few words to the large and . 
ever enlarging circle of those who mourn 
beside a deserted cradle, or in a silent 
nursery. As one of old has said, ?c these 
pages, if thou be a father, thou wilt par- 
don me ; if nocht, then reserve thy cen- 
sure till thou be a father." 



MEMORIAL. 13 



/^iUR little Georgie and his twin- 
^^^ brother Theodore came to us on 
the ninth of July, 1863. The double 
gift of our heavenly Father to us called 
forth peculiar joy ; and from that birth- 
hour until that chill, dark Sabbath night 
in which they were parted, they never 
gave us one moment's pain or dis- 
pleasure. They never cost us any but 
tears of thankfulness. The twofold care, 
even in earliest infancy, was a twofold 
delight. 

They were both consecrated to God in 
baptism a few months after ; on the day 
of the service I preached on the Mission 
of children as the instructors of their 
parents (" He set a little child in the 



1 4 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

midst of them"). The sermon closed 
with a quotation of the following pathetic 
lines : — 

"I shall miss him when the flowers come, 

In the garden where he played ; 
I shall miss him more by the fireside 

When the flowers have all decayed. 
I shall see his toys and his empty chair, 

And the horse he used to ride ; 
And they will speak, with a silent speech, 

Of the little boy that died. 

We shall all go home to our Father's house, — 

To our Father's house in the skies, 
Where the hope of our soul shall have no blight, 

And our love no broken ties ; 
We shall roam on the banks of the River of Peace, 

And bathe in its blissful tide; 
And one of the joys of our heaven shall be 

The little boy that died." 

Some of our congregation expressed 
their surprise at the allusion to the death 
of children and the quotation of such 
lines, and thought them ominous. 



MEMORIAL. 15 

For nearly five years God spared our 
noble boys to be the sunlight of our 
dwelling. "I almost envy you those 
rarely beautiful and lovely twins," wrote 
the Rev. Dr. P— — , of New York. Usu- 
ally the first inquiry of our visitors was 
to " see the boys ; " and many an one has 
said to us since, " Georgie was far the 
most beautiful boy I ever saw." "Give me 
one of these," our brother Newman Hall 
used to say at our fireside, "for I have 
none in my nest at home." Those who 
recall the little fellows, as they were led 
by their faithful German nurse Gesine 
through the streets of Brooklyn, or in the 
park at Saratoga, will remember the pe- 
culiar loveliness of Georgie's countenance. 
It was a face to dream about. His photo- 
graphs (which are skilfully engraved for 
this volume), give no adequate idea of 
the ilood of joyous light that seemed to 



1 6 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

beam from his large lustrous eyes and 
bewitching mouth and golden hair. 
There was a fine vein of poetry in his 
nature. Among the first words which he 
ever uttered were "moon" and "'tar," 
as he gazed with infant glee at the 
heavens, from his nursery w T indow. At 
three years of age, when riding with our 
friends at Cedar Cottage, his constant 
exclamation was, "Oh! see the beautiful 
clouds ! " One day when he came in from 
the garden, he said, "Mama, I've been to 
see where the strawberries are sleeping" 
There is a mystery about twin-life that 
affords a constant study to the parent. 
Sometimes the resemblance, both in feat- 
ures and in character, is so striking as to 
make each one the shadow of the other. 
The only marked likeness between our 
twin-lads was in the tint of their fair com- 
plexion, and of their hair. Georgie, 



MEMORIAL. 17 

though the most delicate at his birth, 
became much the larger, and possessed 
the most keenly sensitive nerves, and the 
liveliest exuberance of spirits. Neither 
his feet nor his tongue could move fast 
enough to keep up with his ardent tem- 
perament. It was quite in character 
with him, that one of the first prayers he 
ever uttered was in these summary words : 
"O God, please to make Georgie a good 
little boy, right away!''' A sweet arch- 
ness of expression played over his coun- 
tenance, while he was making his droll 
speeches or practising his roguish fun, 
that was quite inimitable. As he was play- 
ing horse rather violently in his mother's 
room, she corrected him several times 
without his making any answer ; at length 
he said, " Mama, doo know that horses 
never talk" 

From their early infancy the boys had 



l8 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

been, in part, under the care of an excel- 
lent German nurse, "Neenie;" and she 
continued with us until she saw her 
"sweet lomb" (as she used to call 
Georgie) close his eyes in death. Neenie 
was their almost constant companion in 
the nursery, and often in their walks. 
No recollection is more familiar to our 
neighbors than the sight of the little 
German woman pushing a double baby's 
carriage along the sidewalk ; or, when 
they grew older, leading one by each 
hand. How proud she felt when passers- 
by halted to admire their beauty, or to 
steal a kiss on the little velvet cheeks ! 
She taught them to count and to say their 
prayers in German ; and from her they 
acquired a sort of broken half-German 
brogue that made Georgie's droll speeches 
all the droller and more entertaining. 
The boys were very much attached to 



MEMORIAL. 



J 9 



their nurse. But when his mother asked, 
"Georgie, which do you love best, Mama 
or Neenie?" he replied, "Mama, dere is 
a difference in my love. I love Neenie a 
sousand dollars ; but I love doo more 
than tunc [tongue] can tell." 

The color of a faithful negro servant 
was a perpetual puzzle to him. At length 
he discovered a solution that was about as 
satisfactory as the theories of some writers 
on ethnology in our times. Seeing a 
painter putting a fresh coat of black on 
our iron railing, he asked with much 
earnestness, "Is dot de mon what painted 
Diana?" He was accustomed to see 
domestic servants and coachmen calling 
with messages for me. One day he 
peeped into the sitting-room, and saw me 
talking with a worthy brother-pastor of 
an " African church." When I came out, 
he inquired, "Papa, zvhosc colored mon 



20 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

was dot in de sittin'-room ? " I replied, 
"My child, he was nobody's man; he is 
Jesus Christ's servant ; he is a minister." 
With a most ludicrous look of wonder he 
said, "Well, I soodn't sink any minister 
would be so culled as dot." 

The tall figure of Dr. M was about 

as much a study with him as the origin 
of color. When the doctor had left the 
house, after a professional visit, Georgie 

asked, "Mama, how high is Dr. M ?" 

The answer was, " He's six feet." " Oh, 
dear ! six feet! Where does he keep 'em 
all?" When we used to ask Georgie, 
"Of what are you made?" instead of the 
usual answer, " Of the dust of the earth," 
he always persisted in saying, " I'se made 
of blood, and of flesh, and bones, and 
hair, and nails." How plainly we can 
hear him repeat his amusing paraphrase 
of Joseph's history, in which he told us 



MEMORIAL. 21 

how " his brothers took him out of de 
hole, and sold him to de Arabs, and dey 
put him up on de commel, and he had a 
nice ride down to Egypt and growed and 
grozved till he got to be a gentlemon" 
While recording these sprightly speeches 
and winning ways, we do not set up our 
dear child as a prodigy. He was not ; 
nor did he ever display any morbid men- 
tal precocity. 

Both the boys had superb health, and 
enjoyed their play to the top of their bent. 
Once, when playing in the third story of 
our house, they daringly crept out of the 
dormer-window into the eaves-trough! 
and when their affrighted nurse found 
them there, and drew them in, one of them 
cried, " O Neenie ! we was lookin' to see 
how pretty it is down in the garden ! " 

After this providential preservation of 
their lives in their third year, and after 



22 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

their happy deliverance from many of the 
perils of early childhood, we confidently 
trusted that they were both to be spared to 
us. Their mother spent much solicitude 
in securing a large photographic picture 
of them ; and it was brought home but a 
few days before Georgie's death. 

It was a singular coincidence, — the 
superstitious would say an omen, — that, 
on the day preceding his death, Georgie 
was playing with his blocks in the nursery, 
and when his mother asked him if he was 
building a house, he answered, " No ; I'm 
makin' a coffin." Coming in from digging 
in the garden, he said, " I've been makin' 
a little grave ! " The little hollow in the 
earth which the dear hand made that day 
is there yet, with the bits of wood and 
brick beside it. To his grandma, — who 
watched the white cap and blue cloak 
that day, bending over the task with so 



MEMORIAL. 23 

much glee, — that miniature "tomb in the 
garden " is the most touching and cher- 
ished relic of our lost treasure. 

In a bon-bon he found a piece of candy 
singularly shaped like a tombstone ; and 
bringing it to his mother, he said, " Mama, 
Fve found my tombstone." After eating 
it, he said, "There, I've swallowed it! 
Will it kill me?" 

On the evening of the seventeenth of 
March, a " church-sociable " was held at 
my residence, and many of our beloved 
congregation gathered to offer their con- 
gratulations, as it was the fifteenth anni- 
versary of our wedding. Music and 
conversation occupied the happy evening : 
and, at the close, I took the bright, merry 
boys in my arms and made an off-hand 
address of thanks to our guests. The 
boys never looked lovelier ; and when it 
was over, some one asked, " What would 



2 4 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



you do if one of them should be taken 
from you?" Our reply was, "We have 
had nearly five years of perfect happiness 
in them already, and if they were both to 
die to-morrow, we should always thank 
God that He gave them." That was the 
last evening in which the wee lads ever 
were brought in together to see our 
visitors. 

A few days later, their mother made 
her last excursion with them. It was to 
witness the panorama of Bunyan's " Pil- 
grim," at the Athenaeum. The pictures 
of the fiend Apollyon, of the Valley of 
the Shadow of Death, and of horrible 
Giant Despair, rather terrified Georgie, 
who was always timid. At length he 
covered up his eyes, and said, " Don't 
make me look again until the angels 
come" Blessed boy ! they were not far 
off; and very soon the "gates of pearl " 



MEMORIAL. 25 

which the Dreamer saw in vision, were to 
open to his coming footstep. 

In the diary of the teacher of the in- 
fant class of our sabbath school I find the 
following loving record of our boy's brief 
career under her faithful teachings : 

" Georgie C was one of the sweetest 

lambs of our infant flock ; his affectionate 
temperament, gentleness, and other lova- 
ble traits drew our hearts to him at once. 
We have felt for some time that if there 
was a representative from our pastor's fam- 
ily called for in heaven, Georgie would be 
the one selected. I recollect, at one time, 
he recited a part of the hymn ? Jesus loves 
me ; ' after endeavoring to portray the 
Saviour's character in a way that a little 
child's mind could appreciate, a tear stood 
in his eye; he was asked, 'Georgie, do 
you love the blessed Jesus?' and his face 
lighted up with one of his sweet smiles, 



26 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

— f Oh, zes, mam.' * The last lesson he 
recited will never be forgotten, — a verse 
from the Psalms. The lisping tones of his 
voice still sound in my ear as he slowly 
repeated, * Hide me — under de sadow — 
of dy wing.' When we heard there was 
sickness in the pastor's house, not having 
had the slightest intimation who it was, 
we said to ourselves, *The messenger is 
at the door ; Georgie is called for ; such 
loveliness is not often permitted to remain 
in such a world as this.'" 

Georgie grew sweeter and more win- 
some every hour during the last winter ; 
and, sometimes, when he came home 
from the sabbath class, and laid his 
golden curls on my shoulder, and re- 
peated his hymns in so tender a voice, I 
felt a secret tremble at the thought that so 

* Georgie never said yes ; but always "zes." 



MEMORIAL. 27 

much treasure was intrusted to so frail an 
earthen vessel. On the sabbath preced- 
ing his death, he came in from the school, 
and shaking the snow from his coat, 
marched up to me, and began to repeat 
the verses he had committed to memory, 
" God is love," and " Knock, and it sail be 
open to ddo," and "Hide me under de 
sadow of dy wing." Already was that 
"wing" being outspread to hover over our 
darling ; but our eyes were mercifully 
holden, that we saw not its coming. The 
card which he brought home that sabbath 
from school, and which was discovered 
afterwards in his little box, contained the 
appropriate passage, "They shall be 
mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day 
when I make up my jewels." 

The day before his departure from us 
was spent in frolicsome and happy play. 
We observed a peculiar flush on the faces 



28 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

of both the boys, but it excited no alarm. 
At the tea-table they both stood up, and 
repeated, in jocular style, a bit of verse 
which their cousin had taught them : — 

"As I was walking out one day, 
A sinkin ob de wedder, 
I spied a pair ob roguish shines, — 
A neat and happy fedder. 

She looked at me. I looked at her, 

My heart it went tit-tat, 
And den see turned so smililee, 

How does doo like my hot? 

Oh ! I sink it's gay and pretty too, 

Dey look so well togedder, 
Dame glossy coorls and yockey hot 

Mit de rooster's fedder." 

When Georgie had finished his in his 
broad amusing pronunciation, he kissed- 
us all "good-night" for the last time, and 
ran laughing from the room. As he was 
put to bed, he roguishly said, "My little 
footies are tired at both ends." Hearing 
his mother pass the nursery, he said, 



MEMORIAL. 



2 9 



w My sweet little mama, come and kiss me 
good-night; I want to talk to doo." 

Early on the next morning (sabbath, 
April 19th) the dreaded scarlet fever — 
most mysterious of all permitted scourges 
of the fireside — smote his lovely form 
with a violence past all skill to arrest. 
The first symptoms were a vomiting, ac- 
companied with a high fever, and a rac- 
ing pulse. The usual rash did not make 
its appearance. The malignant poison 
of the disease seemed to crush the whole 
nervous system at once, and in a few 
hours he lay in an entire collapse, like 
that of the Asiatic cholera. He suffered 
no acute pain, — only complained of being 
w tired ; " but the livid and purple hues of 
his delicate skin told how rapidly death 
was changing his countenance, and send- 
ing him away. 

The sermon which I had before pre- 



30 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

pared for that very morning was on 
reading aright the discipline of our 
heavenly Father, — especially in the 
death of our children ! In that sermon I 
said, "A thousand times over have I pit- 
ied more the mother of a living sorrow 
than I have pitied the mother of a departed 
joy. Parents, spare your tears for those 
whom you have laid down to sleep in their 
narrow beds of earth, with the now with- 
ered rose-bud mingling with their dust. 
They are safe. Christ is their teacher 
now, and has them in His sinless school, 
where lessons of celestial wisdom are 
learned by eyes that never weep. Save 
your tears for your living children, if they 
are yet living in their sins, unrepentant 
and unconverted." The sermon closed 
with the hymn (selected the day before) : 

" My times are in thy hand, 
Great God ! I wish them there." 



MEMORIAL. 31 

I had already prepared and marked for 
die next Sunday a discourse on the words, 
" Blessed are they that mourn ; for they 
shall be comforted ! " 

While this almost prophetic service was 
going forward in the church, Georgie 
seemed to have the premonition — which 
often makes a dying child wiser than 
parent or physician — that he was near 
his end. He repeated his cradle-prayer, 
"Now I lay me down to sleep," and then a 
part of his favorite Sunday-school hymn : 

"Jesus loves me, this I know, 
For the Bible tells me so : 
Little ones to Him belong; 
They are weak, but He is strong. 

Jesus loves me; He has died, 
Heaven's gate to open wide ; 
He will wash away my sin, 
And bid His little child come in." 

After he had finished this most perfect 
of modern child-hymns, he looked up to 



32 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

his mother, and his nurse Neenie, and 
whispered, "Does Jesus love me? What 
will Jesus say to me when he sees me? " 
We flattered ourselves with the vain hope 
that he might survive until the next day, 
and accordingly I left him for a couple of 
hours, to fulfil a most important pulpit 
engagement. The little fellow kissed his 
hand to me, and his feeble "bye-bye" 
were about the last words that ever fell 
from his lips. The agonizing convulsions 
presently came on ; and soon after sunset, 
our glorious boy lay cold and silent on his 
pillow. Our Sabbath evening was his 
bright and endless Sabbath morn ! 



| km immb; | opcneb not mg mowijy, hztmx&z 
Sljott bxirst xU 

bhzzzb hz % name of % JTorb. 



MEMORIAL. 



33 



A S the tidings of his death spread 
through the neighborhood, there 
were wakeful and weeping eyes in nearly 
every dwelling. One of the neighbors 
preserved, as long as she could, on her 
parlor window, the faint print of his little 
hand, left there the day before his death ; 
and other such touching proofs of affec- 
tion for the child reached us from many 
quarters. The old Irish gardener came 
weeping to his work in the garden. "It 
e'en a'most kills me" said he, " not to hear 
the boys halloo to me from yon nussery 
window." 

Our Lafayette - Avenue congregation 
were celebrating, that evening, the anni- 
versary of their mission-school, in the 
church. The Brooklyn Union of next 
day, in its report of the celebration, says, 
that, "While Mr. Thompson, of Ohio, 
3 



34 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

was speaking, a message was received 

that one of Dr. C -'s twin-children had 

just died, and Mr. T spoke most 

touchingly and eloquently of the sad 
event. A feeling of sorrow settled upon 
the whole audience; and, after a hymn 
by the children, they were dismissed." 
A valued friend, who was present at the 
service, gave such expression to her feel- 
ings and those of our beloved congrega- 
tion, in the following letter, that we cannot 
refrain from inserting it. 

"Well do I know, my dear Mrs. C , 

how utterly inadequate are human words 
to give consolation in such a trying hour ; 
but be assured that the household of our 
pastor, over which death has thrown his 
gloomy pall, and the bereaved hearts 
bowed in sorrow there, are held in ten- 
derest remembrance by the whole church. 
In each household within it are thoughts 






MEMORIAL. 35 

and words of sympathy which must find 

expression. ? Hitherto,' as Mr. C 

said in his remarks at the funeral of Mr. 
Crook, ? no badge of mourning has ever 
hung at the door of his own dwelling, or 
any coffin ever yet passed its threshold,' 
— so never before have we had occasion 
(in the great mercy of God who has 
spared you) to have our hearts drawn out, 
and our tears to flow for you. But now 
this sorrow is taken up and shared by all 
as one common sorrow. I was struck, 
on Sunday morning, with the intense in- 
terest felt by the entire congregation in 
the sickness which had invaded your 
dwelling ; and when at night it was an- 
nounced that f little Georgie had gone 
home to heaven,' how all hearts were 
thrilled! How many low, earnest words 
were spoken sadly, and how, as in one 
great family, did the sorrow seem to per- 



36 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

vade the church ! It must, in some meas- 
ure, comfort you to know that in your 
affliction we too are afflicted. I have 
seldom known a church which seemed so 
much like one great harmonious house- 
hold, — the result of the untiring efforts 
of your husband and yourself to create 
friendly feeling, and of the cordial hospi- 
tality which you have always exercised 
towards us. May you all have your 
reward now by the outpouring of sym- 
pathy from the many hearts you have 
blessed ! 

The form of your trial is peculiar to 
you. The gift of two beautiful children 
at once is seldom granted ; and these two, 
— how beautiful they were ! There must 
be a certain pleasure and pride enjoyed 
in a pair of such lovely boys that no sin- 
gle child could give ; and I think we all 
felt this pride and admiration too. Now 



MEMORIAL. 37 

that the twins are separated, and so sud- 
denly, what can I say to comfort your 
bleeding heart? Nothing, perhaps, that 
you will not hear from others ; but I do 
so long to lift your thoughts (as mine 
were in my bereavement) out of this 
earthly home up to that beautiful home, 
through the pearly gates of which has 
flown your darling child. The sweet 
flower, lent to you a little while to adorn 
your dwelling, and so tenderly cherished 
there, is now transplanted to the garden 
of the Lord, where it will expand into 
more wondrous beauty than any earth- 
culture can create. Oh ! could the veil 
which hides him from your view, be lifted 
for one brief moment, and you behold 
the radiant glory of that upper world ; 
could you but see the seraph-form wing- 
ing its flight in snowy whiteness toward 
the throne of God, and there amid the 



38 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

angel-choir singing the angel-song with 
happy voice, — without a fear or a home- 
longing, — how would you be comforted, 
and, in time, rejoice that in his innocence 
and purity he was ^for ever with the 
Lord"! Tread softly now ; for you are 
the " mother of an angel ; " and from out 
of that shining band of little ones, gath- 
ered to beautify the Palace of our Lord, 
one lovely cherub shall watch and wait to 
welcome his " sweet mother." 

May Jesus, the " Man of sorrows," so 
fill your heart with the rich consolations 
of His love, that you may be sustained 
through all this trying scene, and be able 
to yield your precious treasure, unmur- 
muringly, to Him who doeth all things 
well ! "What we know not now, we shall 
know hereafter." May the God of all the 
families of the earth put underneath you 
His everlasting arms of love, to shield 



MEMORIAL. 39 

and protect you ; and as this link is 
formed with the heavenly world, may you 
be gathered there at last, an unbroken 
household ! Will you please to put these 
flowers in little Georgie's casket? " 

w Little Georgie loved flowers," wrote 
one who was very near and dear to him. 
" Often have I gathered them for him. 
Please place this cluster in our darling's 
hand. They have been watered with my 
tears. Their silent language may tell of 
the wealth of love and tenderness, and 
the agony of grief that fills this heart at 
the memory of the angel-child." 

From many sympathizing hearts, in 
one of the most generous of flocks, came 
similar fragrant tributes. To the cluster 
of flowers (arranged in the form of a 

cross), which were sent by Mrs. C 's 

sabbath-school class, was appended the 
motto : — 



40 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

"We say, 'Good-night, Georgie, dear!' 
The angels say — have said, 
' Good-morning I' " 

From a household in Philadelphia, to 
which the twin-laddies were especially 
dear, came these soothing words, on the 
day of the burial. "We are thinking of 
you all at this hour, fancying the change 
which death has made in the aspect of 
every familiar room in your cheerful 
house, and not yet able to banish the 
sound of children's voices. *The boys' 
are everywhere still. 

" Yet we know that in one room must 
lie the darling of all hearts, ready for his 
burial. God comfort you in the sad hour 
of this day when you take him out of the 
house, and come home again without him ! 
We shall all be thinking of you this after- 
noon, and of the new-made grave in 
Greenwood. Who would, have said that 



MEMORIAL. 



4 1 



Georgie must be the first to take possession 
of that silent home? God seems most 
like a father just now, when he comes, 
and, with an authority we do not think of 
questioning, chooses the little tender child 
for whom we had thought no one but 
ourselves could care properly, and places 
him at once beyond the reach of all 
harm. I am sure you can say, c We shall 
always be glad that he was ours even 
for a few years.' 

"But then to be always missing Georgie, 
always reminded of him by the sight of 
Theo., about whom, sweet little lamb, 
there seems a sort of forlornness, when 
without his playmate ! — oh ! one needs a 
great deal of comforting under such 
thoughts ; and sometimes thick clouds 
will appear, to keep out every ray of 
light. The photograph of the boys lies 
close by my pen, and as I look from my 



4 2 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



page to the two faces. I cannot think that 
one is so changed. Sweet Georgie ! 
what thoughts did he have when he 
asked 'what Jesus would say to him'? 
We shall always think of him when the 
children say that hymn, 'Jesus loves me,' 
of which they are so fond. Yesterday, 
when brother Theodore's boys came over, 
they seemed to be awe-struck, as if some- 
thing they could not comprehend had 
befallen Georgie and Theo. : — how the 
two names seem to flow together as if 
we never could separate them ! Dear 
cousins. I know you will not turn awav 
from any source of comfort : and whatever 
the sympathy of friends can give, you 
now have in the richest abundance, and 
in heavenly consolations infinitely more." 
Well might our dear friend say that 
f ' one needs a great deal of comforting " 
when the\' go into a nursery that rang 



MEMORIAL. 



43 



every day with the music of merry voices, 
and find it silent; and beside an empty 
crib, see, by the dim light, only a white 
sheet covering a little form whose still- 
ness makes the heart ache ! In such a 
chamber of silence with what a heavenly 
sweetness does the voice of Jesus say to 
our aching heart, " Thy son liveth ! " 

On the afternoon of April twenty- 
second, — a golden spring day, when the 
early violets were opening to the sun- 
shine, — we bore away our darling to his 
burial. The simple story is told in the 
following passage from the "Union" of 
April 23d : — 

n Yesterday afternoon the burial-ser- 
vices of little Georgie Cuyler took place 
at his late home in Oxford Street. The 
house was thronged ; and friends, unable 
to gain admission, lined the sidewalk, 
stood in groups in the yard, and crowded 



44 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

the piazza. In the parlors, the hall, and 
everywhere were flowers in profusion ; 
many of them were wrought into the 
most tasteful forms of crowns, crosses, 
anchors, stars, and other fitting devices. 
Over the medallion likenesses of the boys 
was a superb floral crown, and on the 
w T hite casket rested an exquisite cross of 
fragrant buds. The Rev. Theodore S. 
Brown, of the Memorial Church, read the 
Scriptures ; Rev. Dr. Hall made the 
opening prayer ; Rev. Dr. Duryea made 
an address and offered prayer ; and Dr. 
Cuyler uttered a brief testimony to his 
assembled people, on the sustaining grace 
of God in trial. The choir of the church 
sang the two hymns, — c Jesus loves me,' 
and * Peacefully sleep;' and at the close 
of the services, the remains were taken 
to Greenwood." Georgie's resting-place 
is at the junction of Chestnut and Vista 



MEMORIAL. 



45 



Avenues, in a plot wherein no one else 
has yet been laid. When we lowered the 
precious sleeper into his narrow bed, it 
seemed a cold lonely spot to leave a 
delicate child. But we parents must re- 
member that it was in just such a spot 
the Master lay ; and from His tomb in 
Joseph's garden, as from His living lips, 
issues His divine command, "Suffer the 
little children to come unto Me" It is 
only when we open a gateway of earth 
for the body, that He doth open to the 
spirit a gateway to glory, — 

"And bid His little child come in." 

In arranging this simple Memorial of 
our child, this seems to be a fitting place 
to introduce two poetic tributes which 
may well be laid as chaplets on his new- 
made grave. The first one is from an 
unknown friend in Virginia. The other 



46 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

is from a gifted authoress whose produc- 
tions are already familiar to the American 
people. 

WHAT WILL JESUS SAY? 

SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF GEORGIE 
CUYLER. 

"He looked up to his mother and whispered, 'Does Jesus love 
me ? What will He say to me when He first sees me?"' 

"I know that He loves me, mother; 

I know that He hears me pray; 
But when He sees me coming, 

What will Jesus say? 

When He hears my little footstep, 

Will He cross the crystal sea, 
And out from among the angels 

Come to welcome me?" 

All through that April sabbath, 
With head on the mother's breast, 

The sweet child murmured of Jesus 
Till the sun was low in the west. 

Then the door of heaven opened, 

That had been ajar all day, 
And our darling alone could answer, 

" What will Jesus say?" 



MEMORIAL. 47 

We know that He went to meet him ; 

We know that a pierced hand 
Was the first that clasped our dear one's, 

In the bliss of the better land. 

We cannot grow used to the silence; 

We listen all the day 
For the voice that made such music, 

For the voice that's far away, — 

For the merry foot on the stairway, 

For the voice like a silver bell ; 
And Thou knowest, O our Father! 

How hard to say, It is well I 

The cup is very bitter 

Pressed to our burning lips ; 
The shade of that April sabbath 

Hath left our lives in eclipse. 

But our hearts are lifted higher, 

In the holy hour of prayer; 
And our heaven hath drawn the nigher, 

And grown exceeding fair. 

On the grave we scatter flowers ; 

But our glorious boy hath gone 
Where no shadow of death shall darken 

The flowers around the throne. 



48 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

And the sacred touch of sorrow 

Wafts from earth's cares away, 
As we think how sweetly he whispered, 
" What will Jesus say? " 

M. E. M. 
Norfolk, Va. 



THE TWINS. 

LINES ON THE DEATH OF GEORGIE C — , APRIL 19. 

I saw twin-lilies on one stem 

Pure, beautiful they were to see ! 
Life's morning dew on each, — a gem 

Shone in the sunlight lustrously; 
Almost alike, and yet in them 

Strange difference there was to me. 

I passed again ; but one was gone — 
The fairest that— the first to fall ! 

Its lily-mate drooped all alone 
A frail sweet flower, the gardener's all ; 

Yet not his all — a rose had grown 
Before within his garden-wall. 

I heard the voices of twin-birds, 

Fair fledglings of the sunny Spring; 
Their notes seemed like prophetic words, 



MEMORIAL. 49 

Fulfilled when one at morn took wing, 
Leaving his mate among the herds 
Of mortals and of beasts to sing. 

I saw twin-children, noble boys, 

Fairer not Beauty could create ! 
They loved : yet one cared less for toys 

And more for dreaming than his mate. 
Death sundered these! Now heaven employs 

The high-souled boy in seraph-state. 

The flowers that grew upon one stalk, 

Will blossom never as before; 
The birds that cheered the garden-walk, 

Will sing in sweet duet no more ; 
But those twin-souls rejoined shall talk, 

In the new life, their first life o'er. 

O large-eyed boy! and were those eyes 
In which such depth of love we found 

Opening so wide on Paradise 

While our short sight by earth was bound? 

Did he the child, than man more wise, 
See that his life lay all beyond? 

Who would recall him from that life? 

Would love parental see again 
Its darling in the mortal strife, 

Or growing up to sin and pain? 
4 



5<D THE EMPTY CRIB. 

If meet that dust to dust be given, 

'Tis meet that beauty should return 
In all its freshness back to heaven. 

We give but ashes to the urn : 
The flame by which life's shell is riven, 
The soul of Beauty cannot burn. 

E. C. K. 
New York, May, 1868. 

While the form of our precious child 
was yet lying in the nursery, his twin- 
brother (who had been removed with his 
sisters, for fear of contagion, to the house 

of our kind friend, Mr. H ) was 

seized with the scarlet-fever, though in a 
less malignant form. The rash made its 
appearance immediately ; but the pros- 
trating effect of the disease brought him 
into great danger, and this danger was 
increased by a sympathetic suffering 
about his lost mate. Before either of the 
children were informed of their brother's 
death, little Theo. wakened Mary in the 
night, and said, "Mary, do you know 



MEMORIAL. 



Si 



Georgie is an angel? " " I don't want to 
get well," he whispered to his nurse when 
at the worst : " I want to go and be with 
Georgie. Don't give me any more medi- 
cine." 

On Wednesday afternoon, about the 
hour when his brother was borne away 
to his burial, Theo. looked up suddenly, 
and said, "Neenie! why didn't you look 
up and see Georgie when I did?" — "Be- 
cause I did not know that Georgie was 
here." — w Why, yes : he was," the boy re- 
plied : "he just came and put his little 
face right in that little round hole" 
(pointing to the arch above his bed) , "and 
looked at me, and then went away." The 
nurse inquired, " How did Georgie look? " 
— "Just like he always did," the child 
replied, "only that his hair was brushed 
away back. I think he had wings, but I 
didn't see them." When asked afterward, 



52 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

"Why didn't you speak to Georgie?" he 
answered, "I didn't think it best, mama, 
because he was an angel." The impres- 
sion of having seen his twin-brother on 
that day remains to this moment in my 
child's mind as firm and distinct as any 
recollection of the past. I record the 
singular incident without either comment 
or conjecture. 

For five weary weeks, which the little 
fellow bore with unmurmuring patience, 
our devoted friends and his physicians 
watched over him with untiring fidelity. 
He often hid away his face, and seemed 
to be mourning the loss of his other self. 
In his childish frankness he once said, 
"I think God was real mean to let 
Georgie die ; I wont have anybody to play 
with." Older people have felt quite as 
rebelliously as the bereaved child ; only 
they were not willing to say it as bluntly. 






MEMORIAL. 53 

Sitting on his mother's lap by the win- 
dow, she spoke of his brother's spirit, and 
he said, "I knew Georgie's body ; but I 
don't know his soul" Looking out to- 
wards the sky, he inquired, ?f Mama, is 
Georgie in the white cloud, or in the 
blue ? " Again, as his mother said, 
"Theo., Allie Edsall is almost the only 
one Georgie knew when he got to 
heaven," the child gravely answered, 
"O mama, you forget Jesus." It was 
a trying day to us when the little fellow 
sat at that window, and watched the chil- 
dren of our Sabbath school march past in 
their anniversary procession, with their 
badges of mourning. The infant-class 
banner, that the twins were to have 
carried, was draped in black. As the 
younger children passed the little survivor 
in the window, .they took oft' their hats, 
and sang Georgie's death-bed hymn, 



54 



THE EMPTT CRIB. 



"Jesus loves me, this I know." There 
has been many a statelier procession in 
honor of eminent departed officials, that 
has not touched so closely the fount of 
tears. 

Another trying day was that to us 
when we brought our surviving son back 
to his home, and to the empty, silent 
nursery. The playthings were there just 
as before, - — the kite which Georgie had 
flown on his last day of happy health, 
and the little block which he had held 
in his hand when he fell asleep on so 
many a night. On the wall were hung 
the big letters, — the "round O," and the 
" crooked S,*' — which he had tried to re- 
peat over when he lay dying of the fever. 
The slate and pencil were there in the 
nursery drawer ; but the little hand that 
made pictures for us had "forgotten its 
cunning" in the grave. Theo. felt the 



MEMORIAL. 



55 



meaning of all this as keenly as we did 
ourselves, and for many days wandered 
lonely over the house, as if searching for 
his lost mate. Awakening the first morn- 
ing in one of his pensive moods, his 
mother asked him, "Wouldn't you be glad 
to see Georgie come back into this room 
now?" With a very confident tone, he 
answered, "Mama, he is here! When- 
ever I'm a good boy, God always sends a 
sweet, happy little angel to stay with me ; 
and I'm sure He wouldn't send any one 
but Georgie." All these may seem to be 
but trivial incidents to record even in so 
unpretending a volume. But remember 
this is a child's biography, and is written 
for the eye and heart of those who know 
how much of every home-life is made up 
of the childish words and acts of those 
young mirrors in which we see ourselves. 
This is written, too, for those who know 



56 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

too well what it is to wait and weep in 
vain, — 

" For the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still." 



But to resume our narrative. During 
his visit with us, last autumn, my beloved 
brother, Newman Hall, of London, be- 
came very fond of the boys, and had 
many a merry romp with them, carrying 
them around the room on his back, and 
swinging them up in his arms to the ceil- 
ing. Georgie went into these romps with 
a glee that made his eyes glisten ; and 
one of the most characteristic pictures of 
Brother Hall in my memory, represents 
him cantering through the house, play- 
ing "pig-a-back," with a jolly face peer- 
ing over each shoulder. 

On the last sabbath morning of his 
sojourn in America, he sat in my family- 



MEMORIAL. 



57 



pew, and heard a few simple thoughts on 
God's method of dealing with His people 
in "stirring up their nests" of domestic 
enjoyment. One of the earliest letters of 
my friend, after his return to London, 
commences thus : — 

"How little I thought, my dear C , 

when I heard. you describe (as I felt you 
did) your own flaxen-haired child, that it 
was your nest, which was to be thus 
"stirred" ! God help you ! Mine is the 
constant grief of never having had a 
child in the home-nest. Yours has been 
the repeated joy of receiving — the con- 
tinued joy of retaining — such treasures ; 
and now, all at once, you have to endure 
the blow of the sudden removal of the 
object of such accumulated love and de- 
light ! Only He who gives can help you 
to endure the stroke ; and His name is 
Father! But this means, oh, how 



58 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

much ! Dear boy ! I did not think, when 
I mounted him on my shoulder, and 
played with him, that I was so near a 
cherub (soon to be). What remarkable 
intelligence and childish faith he seems 
to have indicated ! Those traits of intel- 
lect and early goodness endear him the 
more, and aggravate the loss. Yet they 
show the beauty of the work of God in 
him, and his meetness for such a promo- 
tion. It would be an impertinence to 
remind you of any of the trite arguments 
of consolation. 

K It is all very well to be told how he has 
been saved from the sorrows and perils 
of earth. You wanted to see him upheld 
amid the perils by God's grace, doing a 
brave, true-hearted man's work in this 
life, and then receiving his reward up 
yonder. It is easy to say that he has 
"only gone on before." You wanted him 






1 



MEMORIAL. 59 

as a companion here. It is a grief, — a 
terrible loss, — which I can only imagine. 
But He who made a fathers heart knows 
the pain, and knows, too, how to soothe 
it. May He be with you and your sor- 
rowing household, and give you sunshine 
through your tears ! " 

In a later letter, Brother Hall says, — 
" I keep the photograph of your dear 
boys on my table before me where I write. 
You would have been here, and I rejoic- 
ing in your fellowship, and enjoying with 
you some of our old English scenes, if 
your boy Georgie had not gone home to 
heaven. But his was the best journey 
after all. It costs many tears to see those 
we love taken there ; but we could hardly 
be so selfish as to call them back. f I 
shall go to him,' said a bereaved father 
of old. Heaven is not far off. You and 
I may have to go there by a slow train ; 



60 THE EMPTY 'CRIB. 

but then, again, God may send for us by 
the ? express ' ! And wont one of us look 
out for the other? Which it may be, God 
only knoweth. I sometimes hope it may 
be myself. My precious mother is visit- 
ing us at the age of eighty ; but we must 
soon part from her. Love to her has 
been a passion from my infancy. I shall 
so want to go when she goes. But it is 
best to have no will of our own ; but to 
wait our Master's will, and meanwhile to 
do diligently and thoroughly each day's 
work for Him." 

I trust that my brother will not chide 
me for giving to other eyes this glimpse 
into his own heart-life. But the author 
of " Come to Jesus " belongs to the whole 
Church of Jesus ; and to them every syl- 
lable of this artless letter will be fragrant 
with the "odor of the ointment." With 
this epistle of Christian love, came also 






MEMORIAL. 6l 

across the water a like expression of 
sympathy from my old Brooklyn asso- 
ciate, and now the pastor of the Ameri- 
can Chapel in Paris. Let bereaved 
parents read this and the succeeding 
letters as if every word of consolation 
were addressed personally to them. 

Paris, France, May 19, 1868. 

My dear Brother and Friend, — 
The papers brought me the sorrowful 
intelligence of your bereavement several 
days since ; but I thought you might 
possibly be on your way across the ocean 
before a line of fraternal sympathy could 
reach you. Last sabbath, I was glad- 
dened with a sight of your elder T. M. 

S 's face in the chapel ; and I learned 

from him, that you now feel obliged to 
relinquish the idea of an European tour 
this summer. 



62 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

In my precious photograph -book, 
where the images of dear old Brooklyn 
friends meet me with a look of welcome 
that often draws tears to my eyes, there 
is a card with thy face upon it, and oppo- 
site, in one chair, are cuddled up together 
the forms of two babies that you and I 
crowed over more than once, when "the 
twins " were an w institution " in your 
household. I am not ashamed to say, 
my brother beloved, that I have wept 
bitterly over those mementoes of years 
ago. My heart is full for you in what I 
know is one of the keenest afflictions you 
were ever called to suffer. I wish no 
wish more tenderly this morning than 
that it were in my power to utter one 
word that would give comfort to you and 
yours. 

You know that every word I now send 
you is written out of the very valley of 



MEMORIAL. 63 

the shadow of death in which I have 
been treading these weeks past. In the 
loss of him who was at once a brother 
and my own child all in one, I have suf- 
fered beyond any experience I have ever 
known in a somewhat tried and broken 
life. And so, down here in the dark, I 
cannot say that I bid you welcome as 
you come down. Such "misery does 
not love company." But I feel an irre- 
pressible desire to help you somewhat, 
and lift you as I can. 

It is just a question now how we are 
to stand such shocks, and not betray the 
hopes and promises of the new life. " A 
good man struggling with adversity is a 
sight for the gods to look at," said the 
heathen long before Christ came to earth. 
And may we not feel a thankfulness and 
glory in the thought that even now there 
is no shadow between our Father's face 



64 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

and our own? My poor head, on the 
stone-pillow, looks right up through all 
space, without an intervening cloud, to 
the very presence of the Master ; and I 
am ready, this moment, to whisper to 
any ascending angel on the ladder, "tell 
him I am unbroken and acquiescent in 
His will ! " 

Meantime, I doubt not that you feel, 
at times, that terrible sense of insecurity 
which makes you look tremblingly on 
every thing that yet remains to you. 
Some of us have been through all that, 
and it does not come to any thing. Such 
misgivings may distress us sorely; but 
they do not render any thing we love the 
more unsafe. To fear an earthquake, 
may make one restless ; but it does not 
do any thing like heaving the earth after 
all. God does not follow our foolish 
alarms ; but He follows His own pur- 






MEMORIAL. 65 

poses. And one of those purposes is to 
hide His face for a moment ; and another 
is, with everlasting kindness to draw 
those who trust Him. Whom He loveth, 
He oft doth chasten. 

So, my dear old fellow- worker, I 
stretch out my hand to you over the 
ocean. We cannot carry each other's 
burthens ; but we can entreat each other 
to be brave and unflinching. " And Jon- 
athan, Saul's son, went forth into the 
wood unto David, and strengthened his 
hand in God." Never doubt for a mo- 
ment that not only will it be "well with 
the child ; " but you will more and 
more see that "it was good for me to 
be afflicted." The sweetest office of 
Agnes' " little key " was to open the 
locked hearts of those who had been 
bereaved of their children. Praying 
for you, over and over again, that our 
5 



66 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

good God will be pitiful, I remain, as 

ever, Fraternally yours, 

C. S. R. 

One of the venerated pastors of the 
"Collegiate Church," in New York, had 
been prepared, by no small measure of 
bereavements, to "weep with those who 
weep ; " and three-score years of experi- 
ence of God's grace enabled him to send 
us these words of fatherly sympathy : — 

"Since I heard of the sudden death of 
your lovely twin-boy, it has been in my 
heart to write you. I am not a stranger 
to like afflictions with this in which God 
has visited you and your household. Of 
the eight children whom the Lord gave 
us, He has removed six unto Himself; 
three in infancy, one in early childhood, 
and the two whom you remember, at the 
ages of nineteen and twenty-one. None 
but a parent who has been similarly tried, 



MEMORIAL. 67 

can enter into full sympathy with you. 
An additional interest was imparted to 
your little boy, in being one of the lovely 
twins. There is an exquisite tenderness 
in the heart of a mother, which a father's 
may resemble, but cannot equal. My 
wife desires me to express her tender- 
est sympathy with yours. May she be 
drawn, by this very sorrow, closer to the 
Saviour who has taken her little lamb 
into His own arms in heaven ! May 
this trial deepen your own experience of 
that Saviour's love, and enable you to 
minister more effectually the consolations 
wherewith you are comforted, to the 
children of sorrow. Your Redeemer is 
with you in this furnace ; and not a hair 
of your head shall be harmed. 

"Your brother in the faith and service 
of Jesus. 

"T. D. W." 



68 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

Out of the fulness of his warm heart, 
— that heart which has so endeared it- 
self to his Rochester neighbors, in their 
hours of trouble, — Dr. Shaw sent us 
this characteristic note. 

"I see by the f Evangelist,' my dearly 
beloved brother, that a shadow has 
fallen upon your household. But it is the 
shadow of the One who came to give as 
He came to take, the shadow of Him 
whose shadow is light. My brother and 
sister, how gladly would those who love 
you take this great grief and divide it 
among themselves, and not leave one 
single drop for you. This we cannot do ; 
but perhaps something better than this. 
We can commend you to Him who heals 
the broken hearts, who binds up the 
wounded spirit, and who can restore all 
that He takes away, — and how much 
more beside ! Oh, what a child that will 



MEMORIAL. 69 

be when you meet him again ! so glori- 
ous, so wonderfully changed, that, like 
Mary at the sepulchre, you will have 
to look the second time before you can 
recognize him. 

M But this is a sacred as well as a sad 
hour, and I would not trespass on it, much 
as I love you, much as I would do for 
you. Alas ! that we should find our- 
selves so weak, in that hour when we 
would do the most. Again I wish you, 
dear, dear friends, grace, mercy, peace, 
and consolation, — and all in that One 

who hath dealt the blow ! 

"J. B. S." 

The intimate associate of many happy 
hours wrote me from Stockbridge, Mass., 
on the same day : — 

"I was very much surprised and pained, 
on taking up the c Evening Post ' in the 
cars last night (on my way here), to find 



70 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

the announcement of your little boy's 
death ! My dear friend, what can I say 
except that it is the Lord's doing, and 
therefore must be right. He knows just 
what is best both for you and for the 
child. He has gathered another lily to 
the Conservatory above. The Lord Jesus 
loved him more, and has done more for 
him than you can possibly do, and He 
has taken him. I think that I can, in 
some faint degree, realize the great blank 
which this must make in your household ; 
for the little ones so entwine themselves 
about our hearts, that any rupture of the 
strands is like breaking the very heart- 
strings themselves. But this will make 
one more attraction to heaven, — having 
one so dear already there before you. 
He has gone to that blessed household so 
largely composed of little children. He 
will hunger no more, neither will he 



MEMORIAL. 71 

thirst any more, nor will the sun light on 

him, nor any heat. But, with the Saviour 

who so loves little children, he is in the 

Golden City, in a bliss of which we can 

form no conception. May the blessed 

Comforter give you of His comfort, and 

enable you to say, 'The Lord gave, and 

the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be 

the name of the Lord ! ' 

"Affectionately yours, 

"P. C." 

" The elder saints 
Seemed to my eyes a countless multitude ; 
But these cherubic babes outnumbered them, 
As the dark pine-trees of Siberia's wilds, 
Unfell'd, immeasurable forests, yield 
In numbers to the ferns and summer flowers 
Which grow beneath their shadowing boughs, 
And fringe their gnarled roots with beauty." 

BlCKERSTETH. 

On the same sabbath in which our 
darling boy left us to M go up higher," my 
good friend Governor Buckingham was 



72 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

called to part with his wife, — one of the 
noblest of women and of wives. The 
last time I ever saw Mrs. B., — at Sara- 
toga, — our boy was standing by her side ; 
and two more perfect pictures of exuberant 
health there were not in that w T hole draw- 
ing-room. In a note, sent us a few days 
after his wife's departure, the governor 
says, — 

" I had noticed the death of your dear 
boy, which occurred on the same day 
on which my beloved wife was called 
into that joy which is to be found only in 
the presence of Christ Jesus, whom her 
soul loved. I know what it is to bury all 
the hopes which cluster around a beau- 
tiful, bright, and only son, — a little 
younger than yours ; and in that grief 
we can to some extent sympathize with 
each other. But you know not what 
loneliness and desolation follow the re- 






MEMORIAL. 73 

moval of the very light and life of your 

home. God grant that you may be kept 

in blissful ignorance for many, many 

years ! I pray, too, that God may find it 

best to spare your other dear boy ; and 

may he comfort you and your dear wife 

abundantly ! We will struggle on a little 

longer ; and then meet these loved ones 

where there is no pain, no sickness, no 

sin, no sorrow. 

"Ever yours, 

"W. A. B." 

I find it very difficult to know where 
to stop, as I look at the piles of kind 
and sympathetic letters which lie before 
me, — every one of them moistened with 
tears of gratitude as they were read. 
One touch of sorrow makes the whole 
world kin. Perhaps one reason why 
God leads us into the vale of bereave- 
ment is that our hearts may warm to- 



74 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

wards others who are suffering the same 
griefs as ourselves. When we have laid 
one of our own children in the grave, 
every other little grave becomes an ob- 
ject of interest ; and we can hardly pass 
a doorway with a white ribbon floating 
from it, without a desire to go in and 
inquire the particulars of the tender sor- 
row, and to offer a syllable or two of 
condolence. No stroke touches all hearts 
like the death of children. f; My eyes 
are still wet from reading the story of 
your little boy's death in the ? Indepen- 
dent,'" wrote an eminent civilian to us. 
The tenderest episode in Lincoln's career 
of trial and glory is the breaking down 
of his father's heart over the loss of the 
boy "Willie." To this day, Horace 
Greeley is ready to turn away from the 
most gifted and entertaining guests, and 
to talk, by the hour, with any one who 



MEMORIAL. 75 

will listen to him, about that beautiful 
and idolized son "Pickie," who was 
buried nearly twenty years ago. I know 
of few finer passages from Mr. Greeley's 
prolific pen than the following, with 
which he closes a statistical sketch of 
Lake Superior and its shores : — 

' ? Who shall then know or care that I, 
a tired wanderer from the city's ceaseless 
strife, once roamed along these shores, 
patiently turning over the pebbles and 
sand, in search of agates and cornelians, 
or joyously gathering the red berries of 
the mountain-ash, — and all for thee, dear 
son of my heart ! polar summer of my 
rugged life ! then so anxiously awaiting 
me in our distant cottage home, as now 
more calmly in the radiant Land of Souls? 
God keep me worthy of thy love through 
the weary years, till I meet thee and 
greet thee in that world where the 



76 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

loving re-unite, to be parted no more 
for ever." 

I should like to have knozvn that noble- 
man who is said to have kept a certain 
box beside his bed as the most treasured 
article in his mansion, and, in his will, 
made a provision for its farther safe-keep- 
ing. After his death, the box so sacredly 
guarded was opened, and, instead of 
imagined stores of gold or jewels, it was 
found to contain only a few playthings of 
a darling child, who had died many long 
years before ! How true to nature is the 
New-Testament history which pictures to 
us the ruler Jairus hastening to bring the 
divine Healer to the bedside of his sick 
daughter, and the anxious father beseech- 
ing the Saviour to "Come down, ere my 
child die ! " Then, as now, the blow 
which makes the heart bleed the soonest 
is that which falls upon the head of a 
beloved child. 



MEMORIAL. 77 

It has been from those parents who 
have themselves been bereaved that we 
have received many of the sweetest let- 
ters of condolence. In the subjoined 
passages from a few of these letters are 
the experiences of some who have learned 
in their own homes the lessons of an 
empty crib. The first is from the author 
of that delightful hymn, — 

" My faith looks up to Thee ! " 

Bible House, N.Y., April 21, 1868. 

My dear Brother, — I know that 
sorrow is a sacred thing, on which a 
stranger has no right to intrude ; but I 
do not count myself a stranger, though 
we have not met as often as I could wish. 
If I have no other ground to justify my 
sending this note, this you will allow to 
be a valid one, that my dear wife and 
myself have committed seven sweet chil- 



7 8 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

dren to the dust ! All of them that was 
mortal, I mean; and now we always 
think with a tranquil joy of our family in 
heaven. Full well we know how to 
sympathize with you. Our own experi- 
ence has been, that the sympathy of those 
who have themselves suffered has some- 
what more of meaning and of comfort in 
it than that of most others. I do not 
doubt that you will take this affliction 
lovingly, as from the hand of your faith- 
ful Lord ; and that He will send you such 
special gifts, such delightful revelations 
of Himself, that you will have no dif- 
ficulty in saying, "He hath done all 
things weH." It is, probably, in part, for 
the sake of their flocks that ministers are 
called to suffer ; that, like our Lord, we 
may the more readily be touched with a 
feeling of others' griefs. A child in 
Heaven ! It is a thrilling thought. 



MEMORIAL. 79 

never knew how much there was ex- 
pressed in the Bible of divine love to 
little children till I searched for it beside 
my precious dead. I pray God to give 
you and yours all comfort in this great 
sorrow, and believe me, 

Faithfully yours, r. p. 



Jersey City. April 23, 1868. 

My dear and afflicted Brother, — 
Although not claiming the intimacy with 
you accorded to many others, yet to-day 
I feel very near to you, by the similarity 
of our grief. Twelve weeks ago, this 
day, God, who kindly gave us our twin- 
boys, took one away. He spared them 
both, in mercy to us, three and a half 
years ; but one grew too lovely for earth, 
and our heavenly Father took him unto 
Himself. Every Thursday is sacred to 
us, on account of the memory of our lost 



80 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

treasure, — lost to us, but gained to God. 
Every grief is solitary ', and God only 
knows our grief, and He only knows 
yours. 

This sorrow we must so heal (by the 
divine help) that it may make us purer 
and stronger for the Master's service. 
May God sanctify your sorrow greatly, 
and give you the support which I too 
sadly know you will need ! Sonar's 
hopes are ours, — as he gives them in 
the lines, — 

1 'Years are moving quickly past, 
And time will soon be o'er; 
Death shall be swallowed up of life, 
On that immortal shore. 

"Then shall we clasp that hand once more, 
And smooth that golden hair; 
Then shall we kiss those lips again, 
When Lucy shall be there." 

In deep sympathy, yours, 

G. H. P. 



MEMORIAL. 8 1 

Allegheny City, May 16, 1868. 

My dear Sir, — If it ever falls in 
your way to visit Allegheny Cemetery, 
you will there see c? a flower " on three 
w little graves." w Anna^ aged seven years ; 
Sadie^ aged five years ; Lillie, aged three 
years;" all died within six days, and all 
of scarlet fever ! It sometimes may rec- 
oncile us to our own affliction to hear of 
one still greater elsewhere ; and this is 
the reason why I, a perfect stranger, 
venture to trespass upon you in your sore 
bereavement, and to tell you of my heart- 
felt sympathy. I am especially drawn 
towards your suffering household because 
your beloved boy died with that dreadful 
disease, the scarlet fever, which, in its 
malignant form, no medical skill seems 
yet able to master. May God, in his all- 
wise providence, spare the life of the 
remaining twin-boy. 
6 



82 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

Our little ones were as lovely in char- 
acter as in appearance. We trembled 
often at the thought that their stay with us 
might not be long, as they seemed to be 
ripening for heaven. The older ones 
were wont to pray often for me when I 
was away, and very tenderly for me, if 
any thing occurred to trouble or grieve 
me. When Annie was sick, and she saw 
a tear on my cheek, she wiped it away, 
patted my face, and said, " Don't cry, dear 
ma ; you are a dear good ma ; but let 
me speak to God." She clasped her little 
hands, and said, "O God! wont you 
please make mamma try and not cry, and 
please take the pain out of my knees. 
Amen." 

When Sadie w r as brought into the room, 
attacked in the same way (with severe 
vomiting), she smiled sweetly, and said, 
"Ma, I am not much sick." I said, 






MEMORIAL. 83 

"Daughter, would you be afraid to be 
much sick, and perhaps die?" Her cheer- 
ful answer was, "No, no : if God wants 
me, I am willing to go." When the 
sprightly fairy-like little Lillie with her 
golden curls, was brought into the nur- 
sery, — prostrated from the first, — she 
faintly said, "Dear ma, when us all die, 
us will all be in heaven ; and that is such 
a nice place." 

Oh, what a sorrow was this! God 
grant that His hand be stayed with you ! 
I can feel now that all that affliction was 
needful for me. When I go to their three 
little graves, week after week, and place 
their favorite flowers there (as they come 
in their season), I fancy that I can still 
feel that soft little hand patting me, and 
saying, "Don't cry, ma ; don't cry •" When 
there, I realize that their spirits are near 
me, and I come home comforted and re- 



84 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

freshed. It may be so with you and 
yours in days to come. 

A Reader of the Independent.* 



NORTHVILLE, CAYUGA Co., N.Y., 

July 9, 1868. 

My dear Mrs. C, — When the sad 
intelligence of the death of your beautiful 
little Georgie reached us, it found us 
most anxiously watching at the sick-bed 
of our aged father ; but he is now quite 
restored. Not a day has passed that I 
have not thought of you and of your 
great sorrow. I have made numerous 
attempts to write you, which have only 
ended in blinding tears and choking sobs. 
I know so well how bitter a cup it is to 
drink when a darling child is snatched 

* This is but one of many kind letters received 
from unknown "readers of the 'Independent,'" 
and " of the N.Y. ' Evangelist.' " 



MEMORIAL. 85 

away so suddenly : one of my own house- 
hold's treasures was taken in the same 
manner with only a few hours' longer 
illness. I know, too, how poor and power- 
less are words to comfort the heart so 
sorely smitten as yours. When all looks 
dark, and the sunshine even is sad, and 
even what once made life joyous but 
adds to its gloom; when every thing 
around you reminds you of the loved 
one, — then there is only One, who, in 
such an "even time," can give you 
"light." 

I know how painful must this, the anni- 
versary of the birth of your dear boys 
be, bringing back as it does so many 
sadly-sweet memories of past joys and 
disappointed hopes of a bright future for 
noble Georgie ; for we love our little ones 
not only for what they are, but for zvhat 
they are to be. I cannot express to you 



86 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

how much I loved and admired your 
little boys. (I hope I did not covet them.) 
Theo., with his merry prattle and win- 
some ways ; Georgie, with noble brow 
and thoughtful face, — once seen, were 
never to be forgotten. I have ever loved 
them, and felt such an interest in them 
as I felt in no others. 

• • • • • 

S. M. A. 

[An Indian letter, — enclosing seeds of flowers.] 
Vermont, May 19, 1868. 
For many moons the words of the pale- 
face brave have come to the heart of his 
red sister, — sweet as the murmuring of 
rippling waters to the thirsty lips of the 
weary wanderer. The steel tongue has 
come to the ear of your red sister, and 
told her that the Great Spirit has entered 
the door of your lodge, and taken to the 



MEMORIAL. 87 

happy hunting-ground a light from your 
wigwam. Ah ! my brother, the Great 
Spirit has a beautiful garden, where live 
the little red and pale-face pappooses, free 
from all earth's storms. The Great 
Spirit, my brother, can take better care 
of your little Georgie, give him a better 
home, and an education among the 
angels ! The oak grows strong by the 
storm. So will your love to the Great 
Spirit grow deeper, since He has taken 
to His care your beautiful boy. 

Will you plant on his grave these star- 
flowers? As they come up with their 
sinless blossoms, may they cheer you in 
your sorrow, and bring him near in 
memory and hope ! Few places on earth 
are nearer heaven than the spot where 
rests our dead. 

Your red sister has said her talk, and 
would hear from the pale brave. With 



88 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

greetings to the gentle partner of your 
sorrows, I am yours in Christian love. 

Your red sister, c. 






West 44TH Street, New York, 
April 20, 1868. 

The shadow has indeed fallen upon 
your household, and one of its sunbeams 
has been shut out. I know how dark is 
that shadow, and how yearningly the 
heart seeks after its sunbeam ; and with 
deep sympathy and sorrow, I take you 
by the hand, and mingle my tears with 
yours. 

I well remember the dear boy, as I 
saw him at Saratoga last summer, so full 
of life and promise, so joyous, twining 
himself so lovingly about your hearts ; 
and the thought comes welling up, — 
has that life gone out? Is that all that 



MEMORIAL. 89 

we are to have of Georgie? No, no: 
he is not dead. The Master had need of 
him, and said, "Come up higher," and 
so, on that holy day, sent His chariot of 
winged angels, and took him home. 

My brother and sister, look not into 
the grave : your boy is not there ; he is 
above, with the redeemed; his life has 
just begun. Look up, and see him in 
the arms of the blessed Jesus, who 
smilingly says to you, "Suffer the little 
child to come unto Me." In the spiritual 
garden, you have now a new interest : 
your own plant is there ; and the great 
and good Gardener has Himself under- 
taken its culture. You may be sure it 
shall become a glorious tree. Let not 
your hearts be troubled : a heavenly 
mansion has received your darling boy, 
and ere long you shall go to greet him 
there; then, if not before, will you learn 



9° 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



the full import of those blessed words, 
"What I do, thou knowest not now, but 
shalt know hereafter" 



T. S. B. 



Oh ! what sorrow, my precious friends, 
has this day brought me : for your sorrow 
is my sorrow; and your grief, mine also. 

G called me in hurried accents, and 

read to me the terrible announcement. 
Can it be possible that the angel of death 
has snatched away one of those lovely 
cherub-boys, the pride and joy of your 
home? Would to God it were impossible ! 
Oh that I had wings to fly to you this 
moment, to tell you how my heart is over- 
whelmed by your grief! Amid your 
tears, and in your deepest sorrow, let 
your hearts swell with gratitude, that his 
precious twin is still spared to you ! God 
bless, sustain, and comfort you both ; and 






_ 



MEMORIAL. 91 

bind your hearts all the more closely to 

each other and to Him ! 

S. C. H. 



This morning, I was telling little 
Charlie — our only son, and two months 
younger than your treasure — all you 
have written in the "Evangelist," of 
Georgie's illness and death. When I 
told him that Georgie asked, "What will 
Jesus say to me when He sees me?" 
Charlie answered immediately, "Mama, 
He will say, 'Suffer little children to 
come to me, and forbid them not J" 
Those words of the blessed Jesus, com- 
ing in such a response from the child's 
lips, had such an heavenly sound, that I 
thought, surely those mourning parents 
would be comforted by them ! No words 
can comfort you like those of the precious 
Saviour. Yet blessings, rich and large, 



9 2 



THE EMPTT CRIB. 



may be given you, in answer to the prayer 

of many, who, like us, have never seen 

you face to face. 

N. K. H. 
Michigan, May ioth. 



My interest in your twin-boys has been 
deepened by seeing their beautiful photo- 
graphs ; and I can realize how keen the 
pang, how poignant the anguish of sepa- 
ration. I hope that by this time the con- 
solations of Jesus have soothed your 
grief, and fortified your courage to en- 
dure what your heavenly Father has laid 
upon you. These mysteries of His prov- 
idence are tests of the faith of a Chris- 
tian heart ; and though we cannot help 
wondering why a child of light and hope 
and grace should be removed, while our 
streets are noisy with waifs born into sin 
and misfortune ; yet we, who see the love 



_ 



MEMORIAL. 93 

and care of a heavenly Father over the 

world, can believe His wisdom, and trust 

His goodness. I hope that the rest of 

your children may be spared to live and 

to work for Christ, which is the highest 

end of life here, and which takes hold of 

heaven hereafter. 

Mrs. G. L. F. 



Death emptieth the house, but not the 
heart. That keeps its darling safe, even 
though out of sight. I know well the 
ache of utter loneliness, the silence never 
broken by a sound we still keep listen- 
ing for. These are His ways to draw 
us nearer Him. Then lean heavily on 
Christ. Lie down on His promises ; 
claim them for your own. Although 
affliction's rod is made up of many keen 
twigs, they are all cut from the tree of 
life. Did it never occur to vou that there 



94 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



is a great spiritual want about those Chris- 
tians who have never suffered ? Leigh- 
ton says, that "God had only one Son 
without sin, and never one without suffer- 
ing." 

A goodly portion of my own life has 
been spent on the bed of an invalid, shut 
out from all the cheerful and useful activ- 
ities of life. But my meditations of Him 
have been sweet. During my invalid 
life, — one of intense suffering, but yet a 
life of perfect peace in Jesus, — your 
husband's writings in the " Independent " 
have so comforted me, that I would fain 
return to you both even one little ray of 

spiritual comfort. 

A. E. A. 



We lost our first-born, a bright beauti- 
ful "Georgie," born one year before your 
own. On the Sabbath morn he came, 



MEMORIAL. 95 

and at the noon of another glorious 
Sabbath he breathed his last sigh upon 
my bosom. Thenceforth how inexpres- 
sibly nearer and dearer are Jesus and 
heaven ! 

We have been along the shore of the 
"dark flood," and held the hand of our 
darling until the surge swept black be- 
tween. But the path to heaven has been 
bright ever since, and still his footsteps 
shine along the air, and the gates above 
stand evermore ajar. Our best love and 
prayers are for you in Jesus. 

Mr. and Mrs. G. L. T. 



I have just noticed an article of yours 
entitled "Gathering the Grapes," and in 
another column of the same paper, the 
death of your little twin-son. I know 
something of the sorrow that has come to 



p6 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

you ; for we lost our dear boy at two and 
a half years of age. 

Yet I am sure that even in this "wilder- 
ness " into which you have been brought, 
your heavenly Father will w give you 
your vineyard from thence " so that the 
Valley of Achor shall be to you a door 
of hope. Thank God ! we sometimes 
get a taste of "the grapes" in what many 
would deem strange and dreary places ; 
and even amid the dry sands of the desert, 
the rich clusters are brought to us by un- 
seen yet gentle hands. 

J. M. C. 



What can human sympathy do but 
commend you to the great Consoler, who 
wept with the sisters- in Bethany? He 
only can heal bleeding hearts. My 
earnest prayer goes forth to Him that He 
will sanctify your grief and make your 



MEMORIAL. 97 

life richer and sweeter, and gently guide 

you towards the land of Beulah where 

the shining ones shall often visit you 

this side the river. 

J. E. h. 



How the poor stricken heart turns, in 
its yearnings, toward that unseen world, 
the home of our loved ones ! If it were 
not for our faith in the certainty of the 
life beyond, how could we bear such 
blows as this? To consign our lovely 
cherubs to the tomb, is a prostrating 
agony ; but when we can raise our heads 
in the serene hope of a re-union, the 
keenest edge of sorrow is tempered, and 
we can feel with Whittier, that, — 

11 Somewhere and somehow we shall meet again." 

The conviction, too, that God is good> 

and doth not afflict willingly, helps us 

7 



98 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

steadily forward, giving us gleams of light 
in the valley of the shadow of death. 

F. L. 



To me, there was always on little 
Georgie's face such a sweet pensive ex- 
pression that it seemed almost heavenly ; 
and I can easily behold him now, by the 
eye of faith, as a sweet little angel in the 
bosom of the Saviour. Heaven will be 
nearer to you than ever before ; and I 

know it will be dearer. 

M. S. 

God never loves us better than when 
He sends us bitter troubles. He so 
mingles mercy-drops in our cup, that we 
love more and more the hand that touches 
us, even though we bathe with sorrowful 
tears that hand to which we cling. The 
river of sorrow is often a new baftismfor 






MEMORIAL. 99 

the ministry. May it be so to you, and 

"as one whom his mother comforteth," so 

may God comfort you ! 

M. E. G. 



Heart-thanks, my dear friend! for 
the sacred picture, and for the touching 
story of "The Empty Crib." Had you 
or had I kept silence, the very stones 
would have cried out. Perhaps few feel 
more for you both in this dark hour than 
I, who learned early the lesson of grief, 
and so lately saw your cherub-boy in all 
that mysterious beauty which seemed to 
foretell his early recall to the children's 
Paradise. Truly it is no common trial to 
lose such a boy, and to see such a tie as 
bound him to his bereaved mate, torn 
asunder in a moment. Such a wound 
cannot be bound up save in the " balm of 
Gilead," and by a Saviour's hand. 



IOO THE EMPTT CRIB. 

The photograph you sent me cannot 

do justice to a soul-beauty like Georgie's. 

As for my verses, so unworthy of the 

heavenly child, they are yours ; do what 

you will with them. How truly were 

<? angels w T hispering " to your boy when 

he spoke those dying words ! Favored 

ones are we who have little ones training 

in the school of heaven. My first and 

fairest entered that High School a quarter 

of a century ago. With a loving kiss for 

the " other half " of your now glorified 

child, and for his bereaved sisters, 

Yours ever, 

E. C. K. 



Has that bright sunny boy — whose 
brief biography we have tried, with trem- 
bling hand, to write — lived and died for 
naught? Nay: verily he has not. The 
value of the lives of those whom God 



MEMORIAL. IOI 

sends into this world, are not to be al- 
ways measured by their duration. Our 
precious child completed his earthly mis- 
sion before his fifth summer had shone 
upon him ; yet he as truly fulfilled w the 
work of Him who sent him," as if he had 
lived to threescore and ten. 

The music of his merry voice, and the 
sight of that face — which was not only 
to be looked at, but to be looked into — 
will be a joy for ever to hundreds who 
knew him. His sudden departure stirred 
and softened many a heart; and the tears 
shed over little children — 

"Have their own sweetness too." 

No bereavements are commonly so 
fruitful in spiritual blessings as those 
which, at once, empty our cribs and fill 
our hearts with Jesus. To me and to 
mine this cloud of trial has been rain- 



102 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

bowed with mercies and blessings. We 
have learned the blessedness of tears : 
they wash the eyes, that faith may see 
farther into heaven. We have tasted 
the sweetness of sympathy in hours of 
grief; and the only pain I feel in pre- 
senting this brief memorial, is that its 
brevity must exclude many scores of 
sympathizing letters, which were quite 
as precious to us as any in this vol- 
ume. We have been admitted to the 

m 

sacred circle of the sorrowing. Hence- 
forth, while we "weep with those who 
weep" over children in the grave, we 
can also " rejoice with those who rejoice " 
over children in glory. Henceforth this 
world is so much the less dear, and Christ 
is by just so much the dearer, and heaven 
is the nearer. 

Henceforth Jesus is not only our Re- 
deemer, but the guardian and teacher of 



MEMORIAL. IO3 

our cherub-boy. To every one who may 
read this story of our empty crib, I gladly 
offer my testimony, that the everlasting 
gospel, the presence of the divine Com- 
forter, the all-sufficient grace of God, the 
"anchor sure and steadfast," which I have 
so often tried to commend to others, are 
now to my smitten soul infinitely and in- 
expressibly -precious, Welcome be the 
baptism, however bitter, that shall make 
any of us ministers of the Word, more 
consecrated to the glorious work of 
preaching CHRIST and Him crucified ! 
I close this love-tribute to my boy, in 
the very room whence his spirit took wing 
for heaven. The pillow in the crib is 
all smooth and undisturbed to-day. A 
picture of yesus blessing little children, 
hangs before me on the wall. Every 
shelf in yonder closet is filled with his 
keepsakes ; and on the nail hangs his 



104 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



little velvet cap. As I look at all the 
playthings, and at the precious little slate 
on which he tried to mark, with feeble 
hand, on his dying day, I cannot believe 
that he is dead. He must be somewhere 
in my dwelling yet. 

" I walk yon parlor-floor, 

And through the open door, 
I hear a footfall on the chamber-stair; 

I'm stepping towards the hall 

To give the boy a call, 
And then bethink me that he is ?iot there. 

"I know his face is hid 

Under the coffin-lid ; 
Closed are his eyes ; cold is his forehead fair. 

My hand that marble felt; 

O'er it in prayer I knelt ; 
Yet my heart whispers that he is not there. 

" Not there ! Where then is he ? 

The form I used to see 
Was but the raiment that he once did wear. 

The grave that now doth press 

Upon that cast-off dress, 
Is but his wardrobe locked : he is not there. 



MEMORIAL. 



I05 



" He lives ! in all the past 

He lives ; nor to the last, 
Of seeing him again, will I despair. 

In dreams I see him now; 

And on his angel-brow, 
Behold it written, — " Thou shalt meet me there ! ' 




A CHILD IN THE MIDST.* 



TT7HEN Christ wished to rebuke the 
selfish ambition of his disciples, 
he took a little child and w set him in the 
midst of them." From that child they 
were taught a lesson of unselfishness and 
humility. 

So our heavenly Father now sets little 
children in our houses to be our teachers, 
as well as to be taught themselves. No 
home is complete without child-music to 
enliven it, and little faces to light up its 



* This is from the discourse* preached on the day 

of Georgie's baptism in the Lafayette-Avenue 
Church. 



IOS THE EMPTY CRIB. 

apartments. Never was there a cottage 
so humble, or so meagre, but that it 
could be made cheerful, by the crow and 
chirrup of infant gladness. And we 
have seen a magnificent mansion that, 
with all its rosewood and velvet, its 
pictures and marbles, was yet sadly 
entity; for no crib stood in its sumptu- 
ous chambers, and no child-voice rang 
through its lofty halls. No house is a 
"furnished house," until God, in his 
loving kindness, setteth a little child in 
the midst of it. 

Bear in mind that the little immortal is 
placed there to teach us, their parents, as 
well as to be trained themselves. What 
lessons they impart to us, what inspira- 
tions, what exhibition of our own faults, 
what spiritual discipline ! They are not 
sinless cherubs, or they would not teach 
us so much : we are not sinless Adams 



A CHILD IN THE MIDST. 109 

and Eves, or else we should not so much 
need to be taught. 

One of the first lessons they give us is 
in patience, — a virtue that some of us 
are slow in acquiring. But who can 
teach it better than a helpless, dependent, 
and often wayward and exacting child? 
Through long, wakeful nights, the pee- 
vish cry of the little sufferer means, 
"Bear with me, mother! I know no 
better. I can't help it. I can't be any 
lighter to carry, or any quieter, under 
the dartings of pain's sharp needles. 
You must bear with me." Every year is 
a year of added instruction. Is the 
youngster slow and dull over his books? 
Then be patient. If it is hard to get the 
truth in, it will be harder to get it out. 
"Why do you tell that child the same 
thing a dozen times?" said the father of 
John Wesley to his persevering mother. 



HO THE EMPTT CRIB, 

"Because," replied the shrewd woman, 
M all the other eleven times will go for 
nothing unless I succeed at the twelfth." 
We do not know whether it requires more 
patience to get on with mercurial, quick- 
tempered children, or with slow-witted 
ones. Both require forbearance and care- 
ful handling. Both can drill us into pa- 
tience. How patient God is with our 
wilful disobedience and ingratitude and 
stubbornness ! Should not we be long- 
suffering toward the little trespassers 
against parental law? 

Children are more than teachers of 
patience and forbearance. They are 
household mirrors to reflect our own 
faults, — sometimes, too, our own graces. 
If we wish to see how ridiculous and 
hateful are our ebullitions of sudden pas- 
sion, we have but to look at the anger- 
storms of our little imitators at our own 



A CHILD IN THE MIDST. ill 

firesides. That sullen scowl was caught 
probably from our brows. That ill- 
natured snarl was the echo of our own. 
That revengeful blow struck at a brother 
may be but the rehearsal of the last 
angry slap we gave the lad, more in 
revenge than in the love of correction. 

Would you see your own faults ? Look 
at your children. They are the plates on 
which father and mother are photo- 
graphed. Sometimes the "family like- 
ness" is frightful. Would you see how 
your own desecration of the sabbath 
looks? Look at your eldest son, lounging 
down, late and ill-humored, to his tardy 
meal on a Sunday morning, more keen 
for your " Sunday Herald " than for a 
preparation for the house of God. He is 
only photographing his father. Would 
you know how melodious is an oath? 
Listen to the young practitioner of your 



112 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

own profanity. When you lose temper 
at his spendthrift habits, remember who 
it was that taught him to prefer a fine coat 
to a fine character. Are your daughters 
extravagant? They but begin just where 
their fashion-worshipping mother leaves 
off; and they go commonly as much be- 
yond her, as she went beyond Christian 
prudence and economy. Do you get pro- 
voked at their tattle? Perhaps they 
canght a relish of scandal at their 
parents' table ; perhaps they learned to 
coin falsehoods from your hypocrisy 
toward visitors, or from false messages 
sent through servants to the door. Child- 
ish deceit is often the mirror's reflection 
of parental cunning and dissimulation. 
Many a worldly-minded mother has seen, 
in the mocking impenitence of a daughter, 
the reflex of her own w lust of the eye 
and the pride of life." Many a David has 



A CHILD IN THE MIDST. 113 

wept over his sensual, licentious Absalom, 
— and tears all the more bitter because 
he saw his own sins stereotyped in his 
offspring. 

Believe it, O parents ! that when God 
sets a child in the midst of us, he puts a 
looking-glass there to see ourselves in. 
Our vices are often made to glare back 
hideous from the countenance and con- 
duct of those who sin our sins over again, 
and " break out " with our own moral in- 
fections ! I once saw a mother weeping 
over the coffin of an infant who had died 
from a disorder communicated bv herself: 
It was to me a type and a parable. When, 
on the other hand, I have seen a godly- 
minded pair, looking with grateful joy on 
the child of their love, as he came home 
with his prize from school, or as he stood 
up before the church to confess Jesus 
Christ, in the fresh beauty of a youthful 



114 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

consecration, then I saw the mirror of 
childhood giving back the beautiful re- 
flection of parental piety and grace. If 
we are faithful to our children's souls ; 
if we more ardently desire to see them rich 
toward God than rich in gold or bank- 
stocks ; if we live out so lovely and con- 
sistent a religion, that they may long to 
reflect it in their own lives ; if we con- 
secrate our children to God, bv consecrat- 
ing ourselves, — then we may thoroughly 
expect to rejoice in the early conversion 
of our offspring to Jesus, and in an after- 
career of usefulness and honor. And 
when we reach heaven at last, there^ 
too, it will be seen that Jesus Christ "sets 
our child in the midst" of us. 



GOD'S BITTER CUPS FOR SICK SOULS. 



/^^OD is the wisest and best of physi- 
^^^ cians. He understands precisely 
the soul's diseases. He never selects the 
" wrong bottle," and never gives one drop 
too much of corrective medicine. My 
brother, can you not trust your heavenly 
Father? Do you fear that he will give 
you poison in His cup of chastisement? 
Do you try to avoid the draught which He 
lias prepared, and with a wry face push 
it from you? "The cup which your Fa- 
ther gives you, shall you not drink it?" 

God often comes to one of his own 
children, and finds him in sore need of 



Il6 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

spiritual medication. He has become 
sick from indulged sin, and eating of for- 
bidden fruit ; or else he is utterly debili- 
tated in all his powers and affections. 
His pulse beats low ; his graces are 
weak. Perhaps this very Christian used 
to pray for more grace, for more strength 
or humility or patience or assurance of 
hope. God takes him at his own word. 
The Christian asks to be made purer, 
better, stronger, and more Christ-like. 
And the very first thing that his heavenly 
Father does is to mingle for him a cup 
of bitter disappointments or afflictions. 
Instead of relieving him, God seems to 
be smiting him. Instead of increasing 
his joys and hopes, he seems to be blight- 
ing them like Jonah's gourd. 

Perhaps this is the way, my reader, 
that God is treating you. A bitter cup 
of trial has been commended to your lips. 



GOD'S BITTER CUPS. 1 17 

But it is you?' Father's cup : drink it. 
What does faith in God mean but just this 
very thing, — that you will trust him though 
he slay? What is faith but the firm and 
delightful belief that when God goes into 
the laboratory of his secret purposes, and 
mingles for you a bitter draught, he 
knows just what he is doing, and also 
just what your soul's disease requireth ? 
It may be bitter, but the disease is 
worse. 

I call you to witness that those con- 
fiding souls who have taken God's medi- 
cines of trial in the right spirit have found 
their prayers answered in their afflictions. 
Behold ! the very graces they prayed for 
— the patience, the meekness, the heav- 
enly-mindedness — were in that cup, 
that bitter cup ! If the cup had not been 
drank, the sweet coveted blessings would 
have all been lost. If God had not dealt 



Il8 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

with them precisely as he did, the spirit- 
ual disease would have raged on, and the 
soul have been sick unto death. Do not 
then push away that tear-draught of sor- 
row which your merciful Father is press- 
ing to your trembling lips. The cup is 
encircled with this precious inscription : 
" Whom I love I chasten; all things 
work together for good to them that love 
me" Will you refuse to drink it? 

Oh ! what blessings are afflictions to 
those who can bless God for afflictions ! 
"Oh ! " said a bright-hearted young man, 
who was tortured with a fatal and painful 
bodily disease, "when I have the most 
pain in my body, I have the most -comfort 
in my soul. When Christ suffered, he 
had none but enemies about him, and 
they gave him gall and vinegar to drink. 
When I thirst, I have beside me the Friend 
that sticketh closer than a brother. The 



GOD'S BITTER CUPS. 1 19 

cup that He gives me, shall I not drink it? 
I do not doubt but that there is love in the 
bottom of the cup, though it is bitter in 
the mouth.' 3 

There was a fine Christian philosophy 
in this last thought of the suffering youth, 
— that at the bottom of the cup lay the 
precious blessing. He must, therefore, 
drink the whole bitter draught, in order to 
reach it. Depend upon it, brethren, that 
many of the purest and grandest displays 
of Christian grace can only be reached 
under a regimen of severe trial. Faith's 
anchor is never so fully tested as in a 
hurricane. Patience never shines so lus- 
trous as in a midnight of black adversity. 
Courage never shows so grandly as when 
death on his r? pale horse " is careering 
down upon us over a battle-field strewn 
with defeat and disaster. 

There is a patience of hope, a joy un- 



120 THE EMPTY CRIB, 

der tribulation, and a sense of the imme- 
diate support of Jesus that never can be 
reached by us when we are in a condition 
of ease and outward prosperity. These 
rich graces lie in the bottom of trial's bit- 
ter cup. And God esteems these graces 
of such priceless value that he mingles 
for us just such cups of suffering, in order 
to bring out the graces in their beauty 
and power. God so esteemed faith in 
Abraham that he proved it with a knife 
flashing over the throat of his darling son. 
He so esteemed patience in Job that he 
stripped him of all his wealth, and left 
him the richest soul on all the earth. 
What a cup of compounded trials did he 
mingle for the heroic apostle ! Yet that 
apostle gratefully acknowledges that " the 
trial of his faith, being much more pre- 
cious than of silver and gold, though it be 
tried in the fire, would be found unto 



GOD'S BITTER CUPS. 121 

praise and honor and glory at the appear- 
ing of Jesus Christ." 

Be not surprised, my friend, when God 
mixes for you a bitter cup. He sees that 
you need it. Disappointment and be- 
reavement do not put sugar into their 
cups : they are meant to be bitter. So 
are the best tonic medicines bitter ; but 
they quicken appetite, and invigorate the 
system. Many a cup of wormwood has 
braced a Christian's graces. Many a 
sore loss has proved an everlasting gain. 
Bereavements are often full-brimming 
cups of tears ; but they have been a medi- 
cine to the soul more healing than the 
sweetest "balm " on Gilead. God never 
mingles a cup of trial for one of his chil- 
dren without a merciful purpose. He 
either means to cure a soul's sicknesses, 
or to save it from eternal death. The 
cup which our Father gives us, shall we 
not drink it? 



122 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

Let us all be careful how we choose a 
cup for ourselves, and insist on having it. 
Children choose confectionery always 
sooner than medicine : one may bring 
sickness, the other health. God some- 
times lets us have our own selfish way. 
He left rebellious Israel to their own way 
when they grew tired of Heaven-sent 
manna, and lusted for the quails. He 
sent them the food they asked for, and, 
while the "flesh was yet between their 
teeth," they were smitten with a terrible 
plague. 

So has many a Christian lusted for 
what has proved a plague to his soul. I 
have known professed Christians to choose 
for themselves a cup of great worldly 
prosperity; and it made them drunk! 
There was Satan's sorcery in the cup. 
Their heads grew dizzy, and they were 
lifted up with pride. They grew greedy 



GOVS BITTER CUPS. 1 23 

for lucre, fond of fashionable follies, self- 
indulgent, and neglectful of their religious 
duties. Prosperity spoiled them. It has 
ruined thousands in our churches. Ah ! 
had all these foreseen what was in that 
cup of worldly prosperity, they might 
well have cried out, ?? O Father ! I pray 
thee, let this cup pass from me ! " 




OUR BABY. 



r I ^ O-DAY we cut the fragrant sod 

-*■ With trembling hands asunder ; 
And lay this well-beloved of God, 

Our dear dead baby, under. 
Oh hearts that ache, and ache afresh ! 

Oh tears too blindly raining ! 
Our hearts are weak, yet, being flesh, 

Too strong for our restraining. 

Sleep, darling, sleep ! cold rains shall steep 

Thy little turf-made dwelling ; 
Thou wilt not know, so far below, 

What winds or storms are swelling. 
The birds shall sing in the warm spring, 

And flowers bloom about thee ; 
Thou wilt not heed them, love, but oh, 

The loneliness without thee ! 



OUR BABT. 125 

Father, we will be comforted ! 

Thou wast the gracious Giver : 
We yield her up, not dead, not dead, 

To dwell with thee for ever. 
Take thou our child, — ours for a day, 

Thine while the ages blossom. 
This little shining head we lay 

In the Redeemer's bosom ! 





QUIETNESS BEFORE GOD. 



QUIETNESS before God, especially 
in dark hours of trial, is one of the 
most rare and difficult of graces. Yet 
when it is gained, it proves one of 
the most wholesome in its influence. 
None pleases God more ; none renders 
religion more beautiful in the eyes of 
men. 

Yet how we dread- the hour of trial ! 
How fervently we beg that " this cup may 
pass from me." No one loves to be af- 
flicted. No one loves to have his plans 
defeated, or his hopes dashed; to be 
stripped of his property or to be cast 



QUIETNESS BEFORE GOD. 1 27 

down from his perch of ambition ; or to 
be bereaved of his household treasures. 

We shudder at the sight of that surgi- 
cal knife which God employs upon us. 
Our self-love rebels against the excrucia- 
ting "operation." But when God — who 
wounds in order to heal — is engaged in 
His providential process of amputating 
a darling lust or cutting out an ulcer of 
besetting sin, our "strength is to sit still " 
"Keep still, my friend ; be quiet," says the 
army-surgeon to the writhing soldier un- 
der his keen knife. Restlessness only 
endangers a false cut of the knife and 
only aggravates the wound. So, when 
God is operating on the heart by sharp 
trials, the first duty of his child is perfect, 
submissive, unquestioning quietness. 

" Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven," is the very core and essence of 
our model prayer. When a sabbath- 



128 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

school teacher once asked of his class, 
" How do the angels in heaven do God's 
will?" one child answered, "Immediate- 
ly." Another said, "Diligently." A third 
answered, "With all the heart." A fourth 
said, "Always." A fifth said, "They do 
it altogether." After a pause, a little 
girl spoke up and said, " Sir, they do it 
without asking any questions" Here was 
a perfect definition of quietness before 
God. It is a rare grace, because it is so 
difficult to exercise. A score of Chris- 
tians can pray and give and work for 
God, where one can be found ready to sit 
down and suffer. To go into battle, with 
the bugles sounding and the very blood 
leaping to the fingers' ends under the im- 
petuous charge, is full of thrilling exhil- 
aration. But to be picked up bloody and 
mangled, and borne back among pitying 
comrades to the rear ; to be laid down 



QUIETNESS BEFORE GOD. 129 

helpless in the hospital, and await your 
slow turn for the surgeon's probe ; to be 
transferred from his knife (with one limb 
the less) into the nurses' silent " ward " of 
sufferers, — to do and bear all this, calls 
out the loftiest qualities of true heroism. 
The battle-field costs less than the hospi- 
tal. So, in the spiritual conflict, God puts 
especial honor on the grace of passive 
submission. He commends the " strength 
to sit still." He approves that patient 
quietness which "behaves itself like a 
child that is weaned of his mother." And 
the loftiest saints in the Bible are those 
who have become the most "perfect 
through suffering." 

Quietness under God's discipline is 
simply the willingness to let God have 
His own way. It is ready to go where 
He sends us, to bear what He lays upon 
us, to sit still just where He places us. 
9 



130 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

Why should we try to get away from His 
blessed discipline? When you would fill 
a vessel with water from a hydrant or a 
rain-spout, 3 r ou do not remove the vessel 
while the stream is pouring in. It is filled 
by sitting still. And if God's storms are 
filling your heart with heaven-descended 
graces, why should you seek to move 
away from beneath its blessed out-pour? 
If God is refining your heart, why seek 
to be taken out of the furnace? 

"Pain's furnace-heat within me quivers, 

God's breath upon the flames doth blow, 
And all my heart in anguish shivers, 

And trembles at the fiery glow ; 
But yet I whisper, '■As God will ! ' 
And in His hottest fire sit still." 

We have seldom met with a finer illus- 
tration of this grace of quietness than was 
presented by an aged lady, who, after a 
busy life of doing good, was at length 



QUIETNESS BEFORE GOD. 131 

laid upon her bed, pain-worn and help- 
less. A good minister went to see her, 
and asked if, after her active habits, she 
did not find her confinement hard to bear. 
w No, sir," said she : K not at all. When I 
was well, I used to hear the Lord say 
day by day, 'Betty, go here: Betty, go 
there ; Betty, do this, and do that;' and I 
used to do it as well as I could. But now 
I hear him say, ? Betty, lie still, and 
cough.' * Which of these two acts of 
obedience was the most difficult to per- 
form, we leave our readers to testify, from 
their own experience. 



yfyr 




IS IT WELL WITH THE CHILD? 



" And she answered, It is well." — 2 Kings iv. 26. 

YES : all is well, though from thy longing 
gaze, 
The darling of thy heai't hath passed away ! 
The anxious eye of fond maternal love 
No more shall rest upon his cherub-face ; 
No more the joyous laugh, the prattling tones 
Of infant mirth, shall greet thy listening ear. 
The little lips, so often prest to thine, 
No more in beaming loveliness shall smile ; 
And from the empty crib there comes no 
sound, 



The above lines — never before published — were 
written by a beloved relative of our child, and have 
an appropriateness that calls for their insertion. 



IS IT WELL WITH THE CHILD f 133 

No gentle breathing from the slumbering one, 
To tell thy child is there. 

Oh, what a sense 
Of anguished loneliness comes o'er the heart 
As oft thine eyes upon the garments fall, 
Wrought with such pride for him ! 

Can it be well, 
That ne'er again the absent father's arms 
Shall clasp the beauteous boy ; that fancy's 

eye 
Shall trace no more upon his smiling face, 
The faint resemblance of the cherished dead ; 
That the fair picture hope's bright pencil 

drew, 
In richest coloring, is washed out in tears? 
Yes : all is well I Oh, lift thine eyes above ! 
What can a mother's fondest wishes ask, 
For her lost darling, like the bliss of heaven? 

And thou must go to him ! May the same 

robe 
That made him spotless in the sight of 

Heaven, — 
The costly robe a dying Saviour wrought, — 
Be cast around thee too ! And when the ties 



c 34 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



That bind ye now to earth are torn and rent, 

May every little voice that mingled here 

In sweet communion 'round your happy 

hearth, 
Unite to swell the ceaseless choir of heaven ! 

Zanesville, August, 1841. S. W. C. 





THE CONVERSION OF CHILDREN. 



COME worthy Christians are strangely 
sceptical in regard to the conversion 
of children ; they admit the impressibility 
of childhood ; they admit that early piety 
is beautiful ; they read in their own Bible 
the promise, "those that seek me early 
shall find me ; " and they read, too, of 
such examples of youthful religion as 
Samuel and King Josiah and the well- 
taught Timothy. But about their own 
children's conversion they have grave 
doubts and misgivings. 

Just as well might they doubt the abil- 



i3<5 



THE EMPTT CRIB. 



ity of a child of ten years of age to love 
its mother, or to obey the commands of 
its father. A child trusts its parents im- 
plicitly. How does your little girl know 
that it is not rank poison that you are giv- 
ing her when she is sick? She cannot 
analyze the medicine ; yet she swallows 
it down from simple faith in your say-so 
that it is " good for her." 

If a child can love a parent and trust 
a parent and obey a parent, it can love 
and trust and obey God. These three 
mental acts are the very essence of reli- 
gion. Bear in mind, too, that in every 
thought and act toward God the child 
may have the supernatural aid of the Holy 
Spirit. Also bear in mind that the cen- 
tre of Christianity is Christ. Now, an 
ordinary child of ten or twelve years can 
appreciate Christ's history, his beautiful 
deeds of power and mercy, the sweetness 



CONVERSION OF CHILDREN. 1 37 

of his promises, and his death of self-sac- 
rifice, just as well as a man of threescore. 
The mysteries of Christ's incarnation I 
cannot understand any better than a 
child ; nor need either of us do it. A 
child can love Jesus with all the ingenu- 
ous ardor of its young heart. Is not this 
the touchstone of vital Christianity? 

Just as soon as your son and daughter 
are old enough to understand right from 
wrong, they are old enough to do right 
or wrong. Doing right is religion ; do- 
ing wrong is sin. Sorrow for wrong- 
doing is contrition. Ceasing to do wrong, 
from right motive, is repentance. Asking 
Christ to forgive wrong is an act of faith. 
Did you never know a child to be capable 
of these exercises? 

Why argue the possibility of childish 
piety, when innumerable cases of sincere, 
intelligent, well-founded godliness have 



138 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

been exhibited by the very young? One 
of the most beautiful examples of almost 
angelic piety I ever witnessed was in a 
sweet girl, who w^as transplanted to 
heaven at the age of nine years. Her 
talk with me in my boyhood impressed 
me more than my minister's sermons. 
When a little sick lad was asked by his 
pastor, ^ Would you like to get better?" 
he answered, "I would like the will of 
God." — " If you get better, would you live 
just as you did before ? " — M Yes ; if God 
did not give me his grace, I certainly 
would." Could an adult mind have any 
better conception of dependence upon 
God than this? 

It may be said that " children's minds 
are volatile and changeable." Are grown 
people never changeable? Do men and 
women of forty years never become back- 
sliders? I had rather risk the volatility 



CONVERSION OF CHILDREN. 1 39 

of childhood, than the temptations to self- 
seeking sharpness and worldliness that 
beset middle life. If childhood is credu- 
lous, manhood and old age are too scep- 
tical. Better a heart that believes too 
much and too easily, than one that is too 
slow to believe and to move at all. Oh ! 
be assured, ye parents and teachers, that 
there is no such soil in the world for 
religious truth and converting grace as 
the heart of a frank, susceptible, trustful 
child. From that soil grows the loftiest 
and sturdiest piety of after years. 

The most important ten years of human 
life are from five to fifteen years of age. 
The vast majority of those who pass 
twenty irreligious are never converted at 
all. Dr. Spencer tell us that, out of 235 
hopeful converts in his church, 138 were 
under twenty years of age, and on\y four 
had passed their fiftieth year ! I have 



140 



THE EMPTY CRIB. 



been permitted, during my ministry, to 
receive nearly one thousand persons into 
the church, on confession of their faith; 
and not one dozen of these had outgrown 
their fiftieth year. I did, indeed, once 
baptize a veteran of eighty-five ; but the 
case was so remarkable that it excited 
the talk and wonder of the town. Such 
late repentances are too much like what 
the blunt dying soldier called "flinging 
the fag-end of one's life into the face of 
the Almighty." 

In judging of the genuineness of chil- 
dren's conversions, we must remember 
that they are but children. Don't expect 
a converted boy to be a pious man ; he 
is yet only a boy. Like a boy, he 
loves to play, and ought to play. But 
if he is willing to leave his play to 
attend a prayer -meeting, why is not 
that as good a proof of his heart- 



CONVERSION OF CHILDREN. 141 

devotion, as for a man to quit his work 
for the same purpose? The little girl 
who denies herself a doll or a dress, in 
order to give the money to a missionary- 
box, practises a Christian benevolence 
as pure as our noble merchant princes, 
when they bestow their thousands in 
munificent charity. A child that con- 
trols its temper, because God forbids 
anger, does as saintly a thing as Stephen 
did when he forgave his persecutors. 
Hypocrisy is one of the most heinous 
and hateful of sins : is there more of it 
under twenty years of age than over? I 
trow not. In estimating the evidence of 
childish religion, we must look for chil- 
dren's graces, and make allowance, too, 
for childhood's weaknesses. God's grace 
does not make a boy a man : it simply 
makes him a better boy. 

At what age should a child be admitted 



142 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

to the church? To this, question we 
would answer, that every one should be 
admitted to Christ's church as soon as 
they give good evidence of a Christian 
conduct. The church is for all who love 
the Lord Jesus, and who seek to serve 
him. The. Bible does not make age a 
condition of salvation. Shall a truly con- 
verted child be kept away from Christ's 
table until it has got over being a child? 
And w r hat is the use of having a fold, "if 
the lambs are all to be kept out until they 
can stand the weather"? 

In every age of life, piety is possible, 
is attractive, is indispensable to salvation. 
We rejoice to see the man of middle life, 
or the mother amid her cares, yielding to 
Jesus a heart that has long been enslaved 
by worldliness, or haunted by scepticisms. 
But still more do we rejoice to see the 
divine Redeemer take his place in a 



CONVERSION OF CHILDREN. 



H3 



young heart, — a heart, like that new tomb 
of Joseph of Arimathea, which received 
Christ's wounded body, — a place "in 
which no other one has ever yet been 
laid" 





CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. 



[From Rev. E. H. Bickersteth's " Yesterday, To- 
day, and For Ever."] 

A babe in glory is a babe for ever. 
Perfect as spirits, and able to pour 
forth 
Their glad hearts in the tongues that angels 

use, 
These nurslings, gathered in God's nursery, 
For ever grow in loveliness and love, — 
Growth is the law of all intelligence, — 
Yet cannot pass the limit which defines 
Their being. They have never fought the 

fight, 
Nor borne the heat and burden of the day, 
Nor staggered underneath the weary cross. 



CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. 1 45 

. . . Infancy 
Is one thing, manhood one. And babes, 

though part 
Of the true archetypal house of God 
Built on the heavenly Zion, are not now, 
Nor will be ever, massive rocks, rough- 
hewn, 
Or ponderous corner-stones, or fluted shafts 
Of columns, or far-shadowing pinnacles ; 
But rather as the delicate lily-work, 
By Hiram wrought for Solomon of old, 
Enwreathed upon the brazen chapiters, 
Or flowers of lilies round the molten sea. 
Innumerable flowers thus bloom and blush 
In heaven. . . . 

The one who nestled in my breast had seen 
All of earth's year except the winter snows : 
Spring, summer, autumn, like sweet dreams 

had smiled 
On her. Eva — or living — was her name; 
A bud of life folded in leaves and love ; 
The dewy morning-star of summer days ; 
The golden lamp of fireside happy hours ; 
The little ewe-lamb nestling by our side ; 
10 



146 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

The dove whose cooing echoed in our 

hearts ; 
The sweetest chord upon our harp of praise ; 
The quiet spring, the rivulet of joy. 

Many of my readers will doubtless 
thank me for adding to these striking lines, 
the following exquisite letter of Arch- 
bishop Leighton, addressed to a bereaved 
brother : — 

" I am glad of your health, and recovery 
of your little ones ; but, indeed, it was a 
sharp stroke of a pen that told me your 
pretty Jo/mny was dead; and I felt it 
truly more than, to my remembrance, I 
did the death of any child in my lifetime. 
Sweet thing ! — and is he so quickly laid 
to sleep? Happy he ! Though we shall 
have no more the pleasure of his lisping 
and laughing, he shall have no more the 
pain of crying, nor of being sick, nor of 
dying ; and hath wholly escaped the 



CHILDREN IN HEAVEN. 1 47 

trouble of schooling, and all other suf- 
ferings of boys, and the riper and deeper 
griefs of riper years, — this poor life being 
all along nothing but a linked chain of 
many sorrows and many deaths. Tell 
my dear sister she is now much more 
akin to the other world ; and this will 
quickly be passed to us all. Johnny is 
but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as 
children use to do, and we are undressing 
to follow 7 . And the more we put off the 
love of this present world, and all things 
superfluous, beforehand, we shall have 
the less to do when we lie down. It 
shall refresh me to hear from you at your 
leisure. 

" Sir, your affectionate brother, 

" R. Leighton. 
"Edinboro', January 16th, 1677." 




ONLY A BABY'S GRAVE. 



ONLY a baby's grave ! 
Some foot or two, at the most, 
Of star-daisied sod ; yet I think that God 
Knows what that little ^rave cost. 



Only a baby's grave ! 

To children even so small 
That they sit there and sing, so small a thing 

Seems scarcely a grave at all ! 



Only a baby's grave ! 

Strange, how we moan and fret 
For a little face that was here such a space ! — 

Oh ! more strange, could we forget ! 



ONLY A BABY'S GRAVE. 149 

Only a baby's grave ! 

Did we measure grief by this, 
Few tears were shed on our baby dead ; 

I know how they fell on this. 



Only a baby's grave ! 

Will the little life be much 
Too small a gem for his diadem, 

Whose kingdom is made of such? 

Only a baby's grave ! 

Yet often we come and sit 
By the little stone, and thank God to own 

We are nearer to Him for it. 





A WALK IN GREENWOOD. 



/^THER people hereabouts, when they 
wish to get away from brick and 
mortar, and feast their eyes on verdure 
and foliage, go to Central Park, or to its 
new rival, the Prospect Park, of Brook- 
lyn ; but, for some years past, my own 
favorite resort has been the beautiful and 
incomparable Greenwood. It has no rival 
in the world. "Nothing that I have ever 
seen in Europe compares with this," said 
Newman Hall to me, as we stood on Syl- 
van Cliff, on a golden day of last Octo- 
ber ; and he added, " Nothing I have yet 



A WALK IN GREENWOOD. 151 

seen in America gives me such an im- 
pression of wealth, taste, and refinement 
as this exquisite spot." Old Jeremy Tay- 
lor says that it is good to knock often at 
the gates of the grave; and, truly, there 
is no terror in death to one who only has 
to look forward to bewitching Greenwood 
as the resting-place of his body, and to 
Heaven as the dwelling of his ransomed 
soul. 

Yesterday I went to Greenwood alone. 
How often, in times past, have I walked 
there with a pair of little feet tripping be- 
side me, which now, alas ! are laid under 
a mound of green turf and flowers. The 
night before the precious child departed, 
having wearied himself with play, he 
quaintly said, "My little footies are tired 
at both ends." Ere twenty-four hours 
w r cre past, the tired feet had ended life's 
short journey, and were laid to the dream- 



152 THE EMPTT CRIB. 

less rest. Thousands and thousands of 
other little children are slumbering around 
him ; for Greenwood is one vast nursery, 
in which cribs give place to little caskets 
and coffins, and no one is afraid to speak 
loud lest they wake up the silent sleepers. 
Over the dust of these sleeping treasures 
are hundreds of marbles which bear only 
such pet names as "Our Lucy," or "Our 
Willie," or "Sweet little Carrie, or "Our 
Darling." Close beside the narrow bed, 
so dear to me, lie a pair of children in 
one spot, and on the tiny marble above 
them is carved this sweet verse : — • 

"Under the daisies two graves are made, 
Under the daisies our treasures are laid, 
Under the daisies ? It cannot be thus ; 
We are sure that in heaven they wait for us." 

What a celestial cheerfulness breathes in 
such words ! How like to a guardian an- 
gel's song ! There are other inscriptions 



A WALK IN GREENWOOD. 153 

scattered through the cemetery which are 
equally redolent of Christian hope and 
immortality. For example, on a stately 
monument is written only the name of the 
dead, and on the other side of the granite 
shaft the simple, thrilling announcement, 
fr The Lord is Risen ! " If Christ be risen, 
then is the believer's glorious resurrection 
made certain likewise. What a contrast 
between the above words of joyful faith 
and another tomb, which bears this fear- 
fully startling verse : — 

"There are no acts of pardon passed 
In the cold grave to which we haste ; 
But darkness, death, and long despair 
Reign in eternal silence there." 

Awfully true as may be the utterance 
contained in these lines of Watts, yet I 
should not care to have it preached from 
my monument. 

Several tombs bear the skiffle line, "Our 



154 THE EMPTr crib. 

Mother" No inscription in the whole 
city of the dead touched me so tenderly as 
the one word, w Good-night," on the tomb 
of a young wife. Perhaps this was her 
last utterance as the twilight of the "val- 
ley" fell upon her advancing footsteps. 
Among many carved clusters of lilies, 
myrtles, and violets, we often discovered 
on the monuments of God's departed chil- 
dren this flower, from the Holy Spirit's 
own hand : K Blessed are the dead which 
die in the Lord." This is the amaranth 
which angels wreathe above the sainted 
dead. How fragrant it is with the love 
of Jesus ; how dewy with precious prom- 
ises ; how it glitters in the light which 
falls from the sapphire walls of the New 
Jerusalem ! [Matchless line : that never 
grows old, and never stales its heavenly 
freshness ! If there be any line which 
the K ministering spirits " chant above the 



A WALK IN GREENWOOD. 155 

sleeping dust of Christ's blood-bought 
heirs of glory, it must be this one which 
the Spirit taught to the beloved John. 
Not as a dreary dirge do they chant it ; 
not as a melancholy requiem : it is a 
jubilant paean of triumph over those who 
have come off more than conquerors, — 
whose achievements are complete, and 
for whom wait the "robes made white in 
the blood of the Lamb." 

In my stroll yesterday through Green- 
wood, I was again impressed with the fact 
that so few, even of the most eminent, 
sons of New York rest in New York's 
most famous cemetery. Clinton, indeed, 
is there, buried beneath a pedestal which 
does not contain his name, only his colos- 
sal bronze statue. Dr. Bethune sleeps 
there among his beloved flock. Dr. 
Mitchell, the celebrated New-York chem- 
ist, lies there too ; and, not far off, his 



156 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

illustrious namesake, the hero- astrono- 
mer, who fell asleep, with his sword by 
his side, at Port Royal. Soldiers from 
the c " Empire City " are buried in nearly 
every avenue and shaded path, with 
devices of cannon or sword or knapsack 
or starry flag upon their monuments. 
But Fulton, the chief architect of our 
city's material grandeur, lies elsewhere. 
Washington Irving, the most celebrated 
of her sons, has his sepulchre at the en- 
trance of his own " Sleepy Hollow." Al- 
exander Hamilton, Marcy, Silas Wright, 
and Van Buren are buried among their 
kindred ; the chivalrous Wadsworth 
sleeps in the valley of the Genesee : and 
glorious old John Brown among the rocks 
of North Elba. Greenwood surpasses all 
other cemeteries in loveliness of land- 
scape, in variety and splendor of its mar- 
bles, and in entrancing views; but it is 






A WALK IN GREENWOOD. 157 

not a Westminster Abbey in its roll of 
illustrious dead. 

Of all the outlooks in Greenwood, one 
of the finest is that from Battle Hill. New 
York, Brooktyn, the bay, and the forest 
of masts, are all beneath you in one 
superb panorama. One can imagine the 
departed spirits of the "merchant princes " 
looking down from this height upon the 
busy, roaring scene of their life-toils. 
What shall it profit them now, if, for 
yonder fleeting treasures of the bank or 
the warehouse, they bartered away their 
immortal souls? 

To me, the most captivating view is 
from Sylvan Cliff, overlooking Sylvan 
Water. On that green brow stands a 
monument which bears the figure of Faith 
kneeling before a cross, and beneath it 
the world-known lines of Toplady : — 

"Nothing ill my hand I bring, 
Simply to Thy cross I cling! " 



158 THE EMPTY CRIB. 

As I stood beside that graceful tablet yes- 
terday, the light of an October sun threw 
its mellow radiance over the crimsoning 
foliage, and the green turf, and the spark- 
ling water of the fountain which played 
in the vale beneath. In the distance was 
the placid bay, with one stately ship rest- 
ing at anchor, — a beautiful emblem of a 
Christian soul whose voyage had ended 
in the peaceful repose of the " desired ha- 
ven." The sun went down into the pur- 
pling horizon as I stood there ; a bird or 
two was twittering its evening song ; the 
air was as silent as the unnumbered sleep- 
ers around me ; and, turning toward the 
sacred spot where my precious dead is 
lying, I bade him, as of old, Good- 
night! 




THE EMPTY LITTLE BED. 



MY little one, my sweet one, 
Thy crib is empty now, 
Where oft I wiped the dews away 

Which gathered on thy brow. 
No more amidst the sleepless night 

I smooth thy pillow fair : 
'Tis smooth, indeed ; but rest no more 
Thy darling features there. 



My little one, my sweet one, 

Thou canst not come to me ; 
But nearer draws the numbered hour 

When I shall go to thee ; 
And thou, perchance, with seraph smile, 

And golden harp in hand, 
May'st come the first to welcome me 

To our Im manners land ! 



€te so it is not % foil! of gour Jfatjjer fo|jitfj is he 
l^ata, tljai otte of %S£ littk ones stjouli* pmsjj. 



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